d with a
detailed account of the disguised Krant's visit and threats, and the
anguish his re-appearance had caused.

'You remember, Graham!' he said, with wonderful self-control, 'how
almost thirty years ago I was the Vicar of St Benedict's in Marylebone,
and how you, my old college friend, practised medicine in the same
parish.'

'I remember, Pendle; there is no need for you to make your heart ache by
recalling the past.'

'I must, my friend,' said the bishop, firmly, 'in order that you may
fully understand my position. As you know, my dear wife--for I still
must call her so--came to reside there under her married name of Mrs
Krant. She was poor and unhappy, and when I called upon her, as the
vicar of the parish, she told me her miserable story. How she had left
her home and family for the sake of that wretch who had attracted her
weak, girlish affections by his physical beauty and fascinating manners;
how he treated her ill, spent the most of her money, and finally left
her, within a year of the marriage, with just enough remaining out of
her fortune to save her from starvation. She told me that Krant had gone
to Paris, and was serving as a volunteer in the French army, while she,
broken down and unhappy, had come to my parish to give herself to God
and labour amongst the poor.'

'She was a charming woman! She is so now!' said Graham, with a sigh. 'I
do not wonder that you loved her.'

'Loved, sir! Why speak in the past tense? I love her still. I shall
always love that sweet companion of these many happy years. From the
time I saw her in those poor London lodgings I loved her with all the
strength of my manhood. But you know that, being already married, she
could not be my wife. Then, shortly after the surrender of Sedan, that
letter came to tell her that her husband was dead, and dying, had asked
her pardon for his wicked ways. Alas! alas! that letter was false!'

'We both of us believed it to be genuine at the time, Pendle, and you
went over to France after the war to see the man's grave.'

'I did, and I saw the grave--saw it with its tombstone, in a little
Alsace graveyard, with the name Stephen Krant painted thereon in black
German letters. I never doubted but that he lay below, and I looked far
and wide for the man, Leon Durand, who had written that letter at the
request of his dying comrade. I ask you, Graham, who would have
disbelieved the evidence of letter and tombstone?'

'No one, certainly!' repli