tered counter of a little baker's shop to have some tea. It
pleased him almost to childishness to find how easily he could listen
and even talk to the oiled and crimpy little barber, and to the pretty,
consumptive-looking, print-dressed baker's wife. Whatever his face might
now be conniving at, the Arthur Lawford of last week could never have
hob-nobbed so affably with his social 'inferiors.'

For no reason in the world, unless to spend a moment or two longer
in the friendly baker's shop, he bought six-penny-worth of cakes. He
watched them as they were deposited one by one in the bag, and even
asked for one sort to be exchanged for another, flushing a little at the
pretty compliment he had ventured on.

He climbed out of the shop, and paused on the wooden doorstep. 'Do you
happen to know Mr Herbert Herbert's?' he said.

The baker's wife glanced up at him with clear, reflective eyes. 'Mr
Herbert's?--that must be some little way off, sir. I don't know any such
name, and I know most, just round about like.'

'Well, yes, it is,' said Lawford, rather foolishly; 'I hardly know why I
asked. It's past the churchyard at Widderstone.'

'Oh yes, sir,' she encouraged him.

'A big, wooden-looking house.'

'Really, sir. Wooden?'

Lawford looked into her face, but could find nothing more to say, so he
smiled again rather absently, and ascended into the street.

He sat down outside the churchyard gate on the very bank where he had in
the sourness of the nettles first opened Sabathier's Memoirs. The world
lay still beneath the pale sky. Presently the little fat rector walked
up the hill, his wrists still showing beneath his sleeves. Lawford
meditatively watched him pass by. A small boy with a switch, a tiny
nose, and a swinging gallipot, his cheeks lit with the sunset, followed
soon after. Lawford beckoned him with his finger and held out the bag
of tarts. He watched him, half incredulous of his prize, and with many a
cautious look over his shoulder, pass out of sight. For a long while
he sat alone, only the evening birds singing out of the greenness and
silence of the churchyard. What a haunting inescapable riddle life was.

Colour suddenly faded out of the light streaming between the branches.
And depression, always lying in ambush of the novelty of his freedom,
began like mist to rise above his restless thoughts. It was all so
devilish empty--this raft of the world floating under evening's shadow.
How many sermons had he l