a time, rubbed out the mental wrinkles and
brought a sense of restfulness and peace. It could not well do otherwise
with such a nature as his. The night was all a-musk with mignonette and
roses, the sky all a-glitter with stars. A gunshot distant the river
ran--a silver thing ribboning along between the dark of bending trees;
somewhere in the darkness a nightingale shook out the scale of Nature's
Anthem to the listening Night, and, farther afield, others took up the
chorus of it and sang and sang with the sheer joy of living.

What a world--God, what a world for parricides to exist in, and for the
sons of men to forget the Fifth Commandment!

He walked on faster, and made his way to the arbour where Dollops
waited. The boy rose to meet him.

"Everythink all ready, sir--see!" he said, holding up a kit bag. "Wot's
it now, Gov'nor?--the railway station? Good enough. Shall I nip off
ahead or keep with you till we get there?"

"Suit yourself, my lad."

"Thanky, sir; then I'll walk at your heels, if you don't mind. I'd like
to walk at your heels all the rest of my blessed life. Did I carry it
off all right, Gov'nor? Did I do it jist as you wanted of it done?"

"To a T, my lad," said Cleek, smiling and patting him on the shoulder.
"You'll do, Dollops--you'll do finely. I think I did a good job for the
pair of us, my boy, when I gave you those two half-crowns."

"Advanced, Gov'nor, advanced," corrected Dollops, with a look of sheer
affection. "Let me work 'em off, sir, like you said I might. I don't
want nothin' but wot I earns, Gov'nor; nothin' but wot I've got a right
to have; for when I sees wot wantin' money as don't belong to you leads
to; when I thinks wot that young Bawdrey chap was willin' to do for the
love of havin' it--"

"Don't!" struck in Cleek, a trifle roughly. "Drop the man's name--I
can't trust myself to think of it. That the one world, the one self-same
world, could hold two such widely dissimilar creations of God as that
monster and ... No matter. Thank God, I've been able to do something
to-night for a good woman--I owe so much to another of her kind. No;
don't speak--just walk quietly and"--jerking his thumb in the direction
of the fluting nightingales--"listen to that. God! the man who could
think evil things when a nightingale sings, isn't fit to stand even in
the Devil's presence."

Dollops looked at him--half-puzzled, half-awed. He could not understand
the character of the man: there were so