ndle's garden-party that Mr Cargrim was quite shocked--and he started
nervously when his chaplain glided into the room. A nerve-storm,
consequent on his interview with Mother Jael, had exhausted the bishop's
vitality, and he seemed hardly able to lift his head. The utter
prostration of the man would have appealed to anyone save Cargrim, but
that astute young parson had an end to gain and was not to be turned
from it by any display of mental misery. He put his victim on the rack,
and tortured him as delicately and scientifically as any Inquisition of
the good old days when Mother Church, anticipating the saying of the
French Revolution, said to the backsliders of her flock, 'Be my child,
lest I kill thee.' So Cargrim, like a modern Torquemada, racked the soul
instead of the body, and devoted himself very earnestly to this
congenial talk.

'I beg your pardon, my lord,' said he, making a feint of retiring, 'I
did not know that your lordship was engaged.'

'I am not engaged,' replied the bishop, seemingly glad to escape from
his own sad thoughts; 'come in, come in. You have left Mrs Pansey's
_fete_ rather early.'

'But not so early as you, sir,' said the chaplain, taking a chair where
he could command an uninterrupted view of the bishop's face. 'I fear you
are not well, my lord.'

'No, Cargrim, I am not well. In spite of my desire to continue my
duties, I am afraid that I shall be forced to take a holiday for my
health's sake.'

'Your lordship cannot do better than join Mrs Pendle at Nauheim.'

'I was thinking of doing so,' said the bishop, glancing at a letter at
his elbow, 'especially as Sir Harry Brace is coming back on business to
Beorminster. I do not wish my wife to be alone in her present uncertain
state of health. As to my own, I'm afraid no springs will cure it; my
disease is of the mind, not of the body.'

'Ah!' sighed Cargrim, sagely, 'the very worst kind of disease. May I ask
what you are troubled about in your mind?'

'About many things, Cargrim, many things. Amongst them the fact of this
disgraceful murder. It is a reflection on the diocese that the criminal
is not caught and punished.'

'Does your lordship wish the assassin to be captured?' asked the
chaplain, in his softest tone, and with much apparent simplicity.

Dr Pendle raised his head and darted a keen look at his questioner. 'Of
course I do,' he answered sharply, 'and I am much annoyed that our local
police have not been clever enough to h