hung now absorbed, poking
among them with a straw, while Langham, to whom only the generalisations
of science were congenial, stood by and mildly scoffed.

As they came out a great loutish boy, who had evidently been hanging
about waiting for the rector, came up to him, boorishly touched his cap,
and then, taking a cardboard box out of his pocket, opened it with
infinite caution, something like a tremor of emotion passing over his
gnarled countenance.

The rector's eyes glistened.

'Hullo! I say, Irwin, where in the name of fortune did you get that? You
lucky fellow! Come in, and let's look it out!'

And the two plunged back into the Club together, leaving Langham to the
philosophic and patient contemplation of the village green, its geese,
its donkeys, and its surrounding fringe of houses. He felt that quite
indisputably life would have been better worth living if, like Robert,
he could have taken a passionate interest in rare moths or common
ploughboys; but Nature having denied him the possibility, there was
small use in grumbling.

Presently the two naturalists came out again, and the boy went off,
bearing his treasure with him.

'Lucky dog!' said Robert, turning his friend into a country road leading
out of the village, 'he's found one of the rarest moths of the district.
Such a hero he'll be in the Club to-morrow night. It's extraordinary
what a rational interest has done for that fellow! I nearly fought him
in public last winter.'

And he turned to his friend with a laugh, and yet with a little quick
look of feeling in the gray eyes.

'Magnificent, but not war,' said Langham drily. 'I wouldn't have given
much for your chances against those shoulders.'

'Oh, I don't know. I should have had a little science on my side, which
counts for a great deal. We turned him out of the Club for brutality
towards the old grandmother he lives with--turned him out in public.
Such a scene! I shall never forget the boy's face. It was like a corpse,
and the eyes burning out of it. He made for me, but the others closed up
round, and we got him put out.'

'Hard lines on the grandmother,' remarked Langham.

'She thought so--poor old thing! She left her cottage that night,
thinking he would murder her, and went to a friend. At the end of a week
he came into the friend's house, where she was alone in bed. She cowered
under the bedclothes, she told me, expecting him to strike her. Instead
of which he threw his wages down besi