ent
upstairs.

"He is a striking-looking man enough," Westray was saying as she entered
the room; "but I must say he did not impress me favourably in other
respects. He spoke too enthusiastically about the church. It would
have sat on him with a very good grace if he had afterwards come down
with five hundred pounds, but ecstasies are out of place when a man
won't give a halfpenny to turn them into reality."

"He is a chip of the old block," said the organist.

"`_Leap year's February twenty-nine days,
And on the thirtieth Blandamer pays_.'

"That's a saw about here. Well, I rubbed it into him this afternoon,
and all the harder because I hadn't the least idea who he was."

There was a fierce colour in Anastasia's cheeks as she packed the dirty
plates and supper debris into the tray, and a fiercer feeling in her
heart. She tried hard to conceal her confusion, and grew more confused
in the effort. The organist watched her closely, without ever turning
his eyes in her direction. He was a cunning little man, and before the
table was cleared had guessed who was the hero of those dreams, from
which he had roused her an hour earlier.

Westray waved away with his hand a puff of smoke which drifted into his
face from Mr Sharnall's pipe.

"He asked me whether anyone had ever approached the old lord about the
restoration, and I said the Rector had written, and never got an
answer."

"It wasn't to the _old_ lord he wrote," Mr Sharnall cut in; "it was to
this very man. Didn't you know it was to this very man? No one ever
thought it worth ink and paper to write to _old_ Blandamer. I was the
only one, fool enough to do that. I had an appeal for the organ printed
once upon a time, and sent him a copy, and asked him to head the list.
After a bit he sent me a cheque for ten shillings and sixpence; and then
I wrote and thanked him, and said it would do very nicely to put a new
leg on the organ-stool if one should ever break. But he had the last
word, for when I went to the bank to cash the cheque, I found it
stopped."

Westray laughed with a thin and tinkling merriment that irritated
Anastasia more than an honest guffaw.

"When he stuck at seven thousand eight hundred pounds for the church, I
tried to give _you_ a helping hand with the organ. I told him you lived
in the house; would he not like to see you? `Oh no, not _now_,' he
said; `some other day.'"

"He is a chip of the old block," the organist said ag