trudging up every night after his work to ask for me--well, never
mind! but it gives one a good glow at one's heart to think about it.'

The speaker threw back his head impulsively, as though defying his own
feeling. Langham looked at him curiously. The pastoral temper was a
novelty to him, and the strong development of it in the undergraduate of
his Oxford recollections had its interest.

A quarter to six,' said Robert, as on their return from their walk they
were descending a low wooded hill above the village, and the church
clock rang out. 'I must hurry, or I shall be late for my storytelling.'

'Story-telling!' said Langham, with a half-exasperated shrug. 'What
next? You clergy are too inventive by half!'

Robert laughed a trifle bitterly.

'I can't congratulate you on your epithets,' he said, thrusting his
hands far into his pockets. 'Good Heavens, if we _were_--if we were
inventive as a body, the Church wouldn't be where she is in the rural
districts! My story-telling is the simplest thing in the world. I began
it in the winter with the object of somehow or other getting at the
_imagination_ of these rustics. Force them for only half an hour to live
someone else's life--it is the one thing worth doing with them.
That's what I have been aiming at. I _told_ my stories all the
winter--Shakespeare, Don Quixote, Dumas--Heaven knows what! And on the
whole it answers best. But now we are reading "The Talisman." Come and
inspect us, unless you're a purist about your Scott. None other of the
immortals have such _longueurs_ as he, and we cut him freely.'

'By all means,' said Langham; lead on.' And he followed his companion
without repugnance. After all, there was something contagious in so much
youth and hopefulness.

The story-telling was hold in the Institute.

A group of men and boys were hanging round the door when they reached
it. The two friends made their way through, greeted in the dumb,
friendly English fashion on all sides, and Langham found himself in a
room half-filled with boys and youths, a few grown men, who had just put
their pipes out, lounging at the back.

Langham not only endured, but enjoyed the first part of the hour
that followed. Robert was an admirable reader, as most enthusiastic,
imaginative people are. He was a master of all those arts of look and
gesture which make a spoken story telling and dramatic, and Langham
marvelled with what energy, after his hard day's work and with
another s