elieve if they had heard it. That he had lived as plain Jem Salter, and
laboured as any hind might have done, in desperate effort and mad hope,
would not have been regarded as a fact to be credited. He had gone away,
he had squandered money, he had returned, he was at Mount Dunstan again,
living the life of an objectionable recluse--objectionable, because the
owner of a place like Mount Dunstan should be a power and an influence
in the county, should be counted upon as a dispenser of hospitalities,
as a supporter of charities, as a dignitary of weight. He was none of
these--living no one knew how, slouching about with his gun, riding or
walking sullenly over the roads and marshland.

Just one man knew him intimately, and this one had been from his
fifteenth year the sole friend of his life. He had come, then--the
Reverend Lewis Penzance--a poor and unhealthy scholar, to be vicar of
the parish of Dunstan. Only a poor and book-absorbed man would have
accepted the position. What this man wanted was no more than quiet, pure
country air to fill frail lungs, a roof over his head, and a place to
pore over books and manuscripts. He was a born monk and celibate--in
by-gone centuries he would have lived peacefully in some monastery,
spending his years in the reading and writing of black letter and the
illuminating of missals. At the vicarage he could lead an existence
which was almost the same thing.

At Mount Dunstan there remained still the large remnant of a great
library. A huge room whose neglected and half emptied shelves contained
some strange things and wonderful ones, though all were in disorder, and
given up to dust and natural dilapidation. Inevitably the Reverend Lewis
Penzance had found his way there, inevitably he had gained indifferently
bestowed permission to entertain himself by endeavouring to reduce to
order and to make an attempt at cataloguing. Inevitably, also, the hours
he spent in the place became the chief sustenance of his being.

There, one day, he had come upon an uncouth-looking boy with deep eyes
and a shaggy crop of red hair. The boy was poring over an old volume,
and was plainly not disposed to leave it. He rose, not too graciously,
and replied to the elder man's greeting, and the friendly questions
which followed. Yes, he was the youngest son of the house. He had
nothing to do, and he liked the library. He often came there and sat and
read things. There were some queer old books and a lot of stup