and strange
thoughts chased through his mind.

"Uncle Charles, a dhrop of the craythur a wee dhrop of the craythur?"

General Pendyce caressed his whisker.

"The least touch," he said, "the least touch! I hear that our friend Sir
Percival is going to stand again."

Mr. Barter rose and placed his back before the fire.

"Outrageous!" he said. "He ought to be told at once that we can't have
him."

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow answered from his chair:

"If he puts up, he'll get in; they can't afford to lose him." And with a
leisurely puff of smoke: "I must say, sir, I don't quite see what it has
to do with his public life."

Mr. Barter thrust forth his lower lip.

"An impenitent man," he said.

"But a woman like that! What chance has a fellow if she once gets hold
of him?"

"When I was stationed at Halifax," began General Pendyce, "she was the
belle of the place---"

Again Mr. Barter thrust out his lower lip.

"Don't let's talk of her---the jade!" Then suddenly to George: "Let's
hear your opinion, George. Dreaming of your victories, eh?" And the tone
of his voice was peculiar.

But George got up.

"I'm too sleepy," he said; "good-night." Curtly nodding, he left the
room.

Outside the door stood a dark oak table covered with silver
candlesticks; a single candle burned thereon, and made a thin gold path
in the velvet blackness. George lighted his candle, and a second gold
path leaped out in front; up this he began to ascend. He carried his
candle at the level of his breast, and the light shone sideways and up
over his white shirt-front and the comely, bulldog face above it. It
shone, too, into his eyes, 'grey and slightly bloodshot, as though their
surfaces concealed passions violently struggling for expression. At
the turning platform of the stair he paused. In darkness above and in
darkness below the country house was still; all the little life of its
day, its petty sounds, movements, comings, goings, its very breathing,
seemed to have fallen into sleep. The forces of its life had gathered
into that pool of light where George stood listening. The beating of his
heart was the only sound; in that small sound was all the pulse of this
great slumbering space. He stood there long, motionless, listening to
the beating of his heart, like a man fallen into a trance. Then floating
up through the darkness came the echo of a laugh. George started. "The
d----d parson!" he muttered, and turned up the stairs again; but