The _plunk! plunk!_ of the
horse's shod hoofs crashed against the blank walls of the shuttered
houses and reverberated ahead of them until sound dribbled away down the
gorge of the all-embracing nothing. Gray, gray; heaven and earth and
life were gray.

Lewis felt like crying, but Leighton came to the rescue. He was in high
spirits.

"Boy, look out of the window. Is there anywhere in the world a youth
spouting verse on a street corner?"

"No," said Lewis.

"Or an orator shooting himself to give point to an impassioned speech?"

"No."

"Or women shaking their bangles into the melting-pot for the cause of
freedom?"

"No."

"I should say not. This is Sunday in London. Take off your hat. You are
in the graveyard of all the emotions of the earth."

Up one flight of stairs, over a tobacconist's shop, Leighton raised and
dropped the massive bronze knocker on a deep-set door. He saw Lewis's
eyes fix on the ponderous knocker.

"Strong door to stand it, eh? They don't make 'em that way any more."

The door swung open. A man-servant in black bowed as Leighton entered.

"Glad to welcome you back, sir. I hope you are well, sir."

"Thanks, Nelton, I'm well as well. So is Master Lewis. Got his room
ready? Show him the bath."

Lewis, looking upon Nelton, suddenly remembered a little room in the Sul
Americano at Bahia. He felt sure that when Nelton opened his mouth it
would be to say, "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir,
or the dinner-jacket?"

By lunch-time Leighton's high spirits were on the decline, by four
o'clock they had struck bottom. He kept walking to the windows, only to
turn his back quickly on what he saw. At last he said:

"D'you know what a 'hundred to one shot' is?"

"No, sir," said Lewis.

"Well," said Leighton, "watch me play one." He sat down, wrote a hurried
note, and sent it out by Nelton. "The chances, my boy, are one hundred
to one that the lady's out of town."

When Nelton came back with an answer, Leighton scarcely stopped to open
it.

"Come on, boy," he called, and was off. By the time Lewis reached the
street, his father was stepping into a cab. Lewis scrambled after him.

"Doesn't seem proper, Dad, to rush through a graveyard this way."

"Graveyard? It isn't a graveyard any more. I'll prove it to you in a
minute."

It was more than a minute before they pulled up at a house that seemed
to belie Leighton's promise. Its door was under a massive portico the
column