rrupted at intervals by rows of brand-new,
red-brick cottages. In the background were the tall chimneys of several
factories; on the left, a colliery shaft raised its smoke-blackened
finger to the lowering clouds.

After his first glance around at these familiar and unlovely objects,
Philip Romilly walked with his head a little thrown back, his eyes lifted
as though with intent to the melancholy and watery skies. He was a young
man well above medium height, slim, almost inclined to be angular, yet
with a good carriage notwithstanding a stoop which seemed more the
result of an habitual depression than occasioned by any physical
weakness. His features were large, his mouth querulous, a little
discontented, his eyes filled with the light of a silent and rebellious
bitterness which seemed, somehow, to have found a more or less permanent
abode in his face. His clothes, although they were neat, had seen better
days. He was ungloved, and he carried under his arm a small parcel,
which appeared to contain a book, carefully done up in brown paper.

As he reached the outskirts of the village he slackened his pace.
Standing a little way back from the road, from which they were separated
by an ugly, gravelled playground, were the familiar school buildings,
with the usual inscription carved in stone above the door. He laid his
hand upon the wooden gate and paused. From inside he could catch the
drone of children's voices. He glanced at his watch. It was barely twenty
minutes past four. For a moment he hesitated. Then he strolled on, and,
turning at the gate of an adjoining cottage, the nearest to the schools
of a little unlovely row, he tried the latch, found it yield to his
touch, and stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and turned, with
a little weary sigh of content, towards a large easy-chair drawn up in
front of the fire. For a single moment he seemed about to throw himself
into its depths--his long fingers, indeed, a little blue with the cold,
seemed already on their way towards the genial warmth of the flames. Then
he stopped short. He stood perfectly still in an attitude of arrested
motion, his eyes, wonderingly at first, and then with a strange,
unanalysable expression, seeming to embark upon a lengthened, a
scrupulous, an almost horrified estimate of his surroundings.

To the ordinary observer there would have been nothing remarkable in the
appearance of the little room, save its entirely unexpected air of luxury