der, it would have been futile to deny--the improvements were
of the visible kind, patent to all men. That Mr. Disraeli's new policy
of Imperialism was to be a great and splendid thing there were few men
among the Liberals wise enough to foresee, and Ishmael was not yet
amongst them. That he himself had grown, developed, become a useful
member of society, no one who knew him would have denied, but whether
his growth had been altogether towards the light was another question.
The old Parson was a wise and a patient man who had gone too far along
life's road to take any stage in it as necessarily final, and he watched
and bided the time perhaps more prayerfully, certainly more silently,
than of yore. Ishmael never failed in consideration, in affection, but
there had grown a barrier that was not entirely made of a difference in
politics. He knew it even if Ishmael, the child of his heart, seemed not
to care enough one way or the other to be aware of it.

One day, a sunlit blowy day of spring, when the cloud-shadows drew
swiftly over the dappled hills and the young corn was showing its first
fine flames of green, Ishmael received a letter. Long after it had come
he sat with it in his hand, reading and re-reading it. A tinge of
excitement, a heady something he had long not felt, because it was
purely personal, went through and through him as he read. The letter was
from Killigrew, from whom he had heard nothing for several years, and it
held news to awake all the old memories in a flood. The letter began by
asking for news of Ishmael, and went on with a brief dismissal of the
writer's own life during the past years. It had been the "usual
thing"--no small measure of success, friendships, women, play and work.
What mattered was that Killigrew had suddenly taken it into his head he
must come down again to Cloom. He was coming and at once. He gave a few
characteristic reasons.

"I have lost something and till yesterday I couldn't for the life of me
tell what," wrote Killigrew. "It's been a good time, and I've enjoyed
most of it, but suddenly it occurred to me that really I wasn't enjoying
it as much as I thought I was, as much as I used to. I lay on the lawn
of this confounded suburban villa whence I'm writing to you now--I'm
putting in a few days at my mother's--and I was doing nothing particular
but think over a lot of old times. And there came into my mind without
any warning--flashed into it rather--a saying of my old maste