and women's skirts were driven back and forward by a bitter
wind; there was an ugly light on ugly houses, with none of that kind
trickery of mist or smoke which can lend some grace on normal days even
to Commercial Street, or to the network of lanes north of the Bethnal
Green Road. The pitiless wind swept the streets--swept the children and
the grown-ups out of them into the houses, or any available shelter; and
in the dark and chilly emptiness of the side roads one might listen in
fancy for the stealthy returning steps of spirits crueller than Cold,
more tyrannous than Poverty, coming to seize upon their own.

* * * * *

In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours,
in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railings
between it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the flood
of tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Its
walls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows were
outlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through its
unshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a brass knocker
completed its pleasant air. There were always children outside the
Vicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of the
green door and the firelight.

Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men were
standing--one of whom had just entered the house.

"My dear Penrose!--how very good of you to come. I know how frightfully
busy you are."

The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back
some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already
hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone
acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the
swarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock.

"I am pretty busy--but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can help
you--or Barnes--command me. He is coming this afternoon?"

Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair.

"Of course. And another man--whom I met casually, in Pall Mall this
morning--and had half an hour's talk with--an American naval officer--an
old acquaintance of Elsie's--Captain Boyson--will join us also. I met
him at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come over
with his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him."

"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"

Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been