hours of darkness. But, though he
told me many tales, Greenwood would not tell me the tale of the
place, however much I begged him to do so. That was kept for the
Shrine itself. That was not as other tales.

We kept up a good fire, for the night was a cold one.

The talk turned on pilgrimages at last; we spoke of many Shrines,
of old-time ones and of others in the heyday of their youth
still. Greenwood talked well on that subject. Was the aura of his
own Saint in the air of that dispensary? He talked with a
passionate faith about more than one Shrine, that left me almost
breathless.

Then we argued about the Pilgrims' Way in Kent, as to where it
was that most pilgrims forded the Medway, and about certain
homely Kentish legends.

Suddenly he rose and went to the door. He looked out on the
mighty vista of sable earth and spangled sky.

'The moon is just going down and you ought to be sleeping,' he
said. 'And remember there is my tale still to tell.'

So we went to the Church. We had one candle between us there.
Moreover, the purple lamp was burning, its quaint cup of wire-gauze
averted doom from many self-immolant flies. We knelt beneath it,
and he said the Prayers of the Shrine, then our own prayers
followed then he began to tell:

'I was coming back from England twenty months ago and I chose to
come by the East Coast. It is a beautiful way to come. I saw
Zanzibar, where there are many hopes and memories. I slept two
nights far out of the city there, in a grove of palm trees. Then
the boat came back from the mainland and I went aboard again.

'We started for a four days' voyage or so, to Beira. She came
aboard at Zanzibar, I think. Some one told me this, when I asked
about her afterwards. But I was never really conscious of her
presence till the second night of our voyaging. Then we met at a
Concert in the Third Class, that I had strolled down the deck to
patronize. To my shame I was traveling second, while she was in
the crowded family of the third. I went and spoke to her.

'A child had had a bad fall from some steps, and she was
mothering him. It was a lovely and pleasant thing to see how she
did it.

'He should wake up without much pain,' she said, with a smile, at
last. She handed the boy to his own admiring mother. Then she
turned to me, for I had been asking after him.

'She began to talk about our common work. "I want to climb on a
new boat at Chinde, and go the way of the Lakes," she said.

'Ar