prayed with an almost violent fervour.
Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though he was
alone, and the odd imploring misery of his voice struck Hartley.--"To
perceive and know the things that we ought to do, and to have grace and
power faithfully to fulfil the same."

Heath's voice had broken into a kind of sob, the sound that tells of
strain and hysteria, but what was there in Mangadone to make a
respectable parson strained and hysterical?

V

CRAVEN JOICEY, THE BANKER, FINDS THAT HIS MEMORY IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Just as Draycott Wilder stood high in the eyes of the Powers that govern
the Civil Service of India, so, too, in his own way, was Craven Joicey,
the Banker, a man with a solid reputation. If you build a reputation
solidly for the first half of a lifetime, it will last the latter half
without much attention or care, and, contrariwise, a bad beginning is
frequently stronger than any reformation, and stronger than integrity
that comes too late.

Joicey had begun well, and had, as the saying goes, "made his way." He
was a large, heavy man, representative in figure and slow and careful of
speech. He kept the secrets of his bank, and he kept his own secrets, if
he had any, and was a walking tomb for confidences not known as
"tender." No one would have attempted to tell him their affairs of the
heart, but almost anyone with money to invest would go direct to Craven
Joicey. He had no wife, no child, and, as far as anyone knew, no kith or
kin, and he had no intimate friends. He had one of those strange, shut
faces; a mouth that told nothing, eyes that were nearly as
expressionless as the eyes of Mhtoon Pah, and he had no restless
movements. A plethoric man, Joicey, a man who got up and sat down
heavily, a man who looked at his business and not beyond it, and never
troubled Society. He probably knew that Heath lived in Mangadone, that
was if Heath banked with him; otherwise, he might easily not have known
it.

He knew of the Wilders. He knew what Draycott Wilder owned, and he knew
that Mrs. Wilder had a very small allowance of her own, paid quarterly
through a Devonshire bank, but more than this he neither knew nor wished
to know of them, and he never went to their house.

Joicey had not "worn well"; there was no denying that sweating years of
Burmese rains and hot weathers had made him prematurely old. His thick
hair was patched with white, and his face was flabby and yellow. Crav