our curiosity," she rallied him. "You men are just as
bad!"

"I have a right to be curious," returned Uvo, in a tone that surprised
me as much as hers. "You forget that your villain was once the head of
our clan, and that so far the fact is quite unmistakable."

"But that's just what I can't understand!"

"Yet the fact remains, Miss Brabazon, and I think it ought to count."

"My dear young man, that's my only excuse for this very infliction!"
cried Miss Julia, with invincible jocosity. "If you'd rather it were
destroyed, I shall be quite ready to destroy it, as Mr. Gillon knows.
But I should like you to hear the whole of it first."

"And I could judge so much better if I read the rest to myself!"

And still he held his corner of the MS., and she hers with an equal
tenacity, which I believe to have been partly reflex and instinctive,
but otherwise due to the discovery that she had written quite serenely
about a blasphemer and an atheist, and not for a moment to any other
qualm or apprehension whatsoever. And then as I watched them their eyes
looked past me with one accord; the sheaf of fastened sheets fluttered
to the ground between them; and I turned to behold the Vicar standing
grim and gaunt upon the threshold, with a much younger and still more
scandalised face peeping over his shoulder.

"I didn't know that you were entertaining company," observed the Vicar,
bowing coldly to us youths. "Are you aware that it's nearly midnight?"

Miss Julia said she never could have believed it, but that she must have
lost all sense of time, as she had been reading something to us.

"I'm sure that was very kind, and has been much appreciated," said the
Vicar, with his polar smile. "I suppose this was what you were reading?"

And he was swooping down on the MS., but Delavoye was quicker; and
quicker yet than either hand was the foot interposed like lightning by
the Vicar.

"You'll allow me?" he said, and so picked the crumpled sheets from under
it. Uvo bowed, and the other returned the courtesy with ironic
interest.

In quivering tones Miss Julia began, "It's only something I've been----"

"Considering for the _Parish Magazine_," ejaculated Uvo. "Miss Brabazon
did me the honour of consulting me about it."

"And may I ask your responsibility for the _Parish Magazine_, Mr.
Delavoye?"

"It's a story," continued Uvo, ignoring the question and looking hard at
Miss Julia--"a local story, evidently written for local publicat