rplexed as to his next step. His heart was very sore.
The condition of Mile End--those gaunt-eyed women and wasted children,
all the sordid details of their unjust avoidable suffering weighed upon
his nerves perpetually. But he was conscious that this state of feeling
was one of tension, perhaps of exaggeration, and though it was
impossible he should let the matter alone, he was anxious to do nothing
rashly.

However, two days after the dinner-party he met Henslowe on the hill
leading up to the rectory. Robert would have passed the man with a
stiffening of his tall figure and the slightest possible salutation. But
the agent, just returned from a round wherein the bars of various local
inns had played a conspicuous part, was in a truculent mood and stopped
to speak. He took up the line of insolent condolence with the rector on
the impossibility of carrying his wishes with regard to Mile End into
effect. They had been laid before the squire, of course, but the squire
had his own ideas and wasn't just easy to manage.

'Seen him yet, sir?' Henslowe wound up jauntily, every line of his
flushed countenance, the full lips under the fair beard, and the light
prominent eyes, expressing a triumph he hardly cared to conceal.

'I have seen him, but I have not talked to him on this particular
matter,' said the rector quietly, though the red mounted in his cheek.
'You may, however, be very sure, Mr. Henslowe, that everything I know
about Mile End the squire shall know before long.'

'Oh, lor' bless me, sir!' cried Henslowe with a guffaw, 'it's all one to
me. And if the squire ain't satisfied with the way his work's done now,
why he can take you on as a second string, you know. You'd show us all,
I'll be bound, how to make the money fly.'

Then Robert's temper gave way, and he turned upon the half-drunken brute
before him with a few home-truths delivered with a rapier-like force
which for the moment staggered Henslowe, who turned from red to purple.
The rector, with some of those pitiful memories of the hamlet, of which
we had glimpses in his talk with Langham, burning at his heart, felt the
man no better than a murderer, and as good as told him so. Then, without
giving him time to reply, Robert strode on, leaving Henslowe planted in
the pathway. But he was hardly up the hill before the agent, having
recovered himself by dint of copious expletives, was looking after him
with a grim chuckle. He knew his master, and he knew himself,