an
creatures before whom he felt helpless because he was an unpractical old
Oxford bookworm. He read such services as he held in his dim church, to
empty pews and echoing hollowness. He was nevertheless a deeply thinking
man who was a gentleman of a scarcely remembered school; he was a
peculiarly silent man and of dignified understanding. Through the long
years he had existed in detached seclusion in his corner of his world
around which great London roared and swept almost unheard by him in his
remoteness.

When the visitor's card was brought to him where he sat in his dingy,
book-packed study, he stood--after he had told his servant to announce
the caller--gazing dreamily at the name upon the white surface. It was a
stately name and brought back vague memories. Long ago--very long ago,
he seemed to recall that he had slightly known the then bearer of it. He
himself had been young then--quite young. The man he had known was dead
and this one, his successor, must by this time have left youth behind
him. What had led him to come?

Then the visitor was shown into the study. The Vicar felt that he was a
man of singular suggestions. His straight build, his height, his
carriage arrested the attention and the clear cut of his cold face held
it. One of his marked suggestions was that there was unusual lack of
revelation in his rather fine almond eye. It might have revealed much
but its intention was to reveal nothing but courteous detachment from
all but well-bred approach to the demand of the present moment.

"I think I remember seeing you when you were a boy, Lord Coombe," the
Vicar said. "My father was rector of St. Andrews." St. Andrews was the
Norman-towered church on the edge of the park enclosing Coombe Keep.

"I came to you because I also remembered that," was Coombe's reply.

Their meeting was a very quiet one. But every incident of life was
quiet in the Vicarage. Only low sounds were ever heard, only almost
soundless movements made. The two men seated themselves and talked
calmly while the rain pattered on the window panes and streaming down
them seemed to shut out the world.

What the Vicar realised was that, since his visitor had announced that
he had come because he remembered their old though slight acquaintance,
he had obviously come for some purpose to which the connection formed a
sort of support or background. This man, whose modernity of bearing and
externals seemed to separate them by a lifetime of exp