"He rose and shook hands with her, marking the dark hollows under her eyes, and fixing it in his mind to get her a settlement. Then he hesitated, looking doubtfully at the others. 'We are going to read the will before the funeral instead of afterwards,' he said.
"'Oh!' she answered, taken aback-for she had forgotten all about the will. 'I did not know. I will go, and come later.'
"'No, indeed!' cried Mrs. Llewellyn Evans, 'you will be doing well, whatever, to hear the will-though no relation, to be sure.'
"But at that Gwen Madoc came in, and peered round with an air of importance. 'Maybe some one,' she said in a low voice, 'would like to take a last look at the master?'
"But no one moved. They sighed and shook their heads at one another as if they would like to do so-but no one moved. They were anxious, you see, to hear the will. Only Peggy, who had turned to go out, said, 'Yes, Gwen, I should,' and slipped out with the old woman.
"'There is nothing to keep us now?' said Mr. Hughes, briskly, when the door was closed again. And every one nodding assent the lawyer went on to read the will, which was not a long one. It was received with a murmur of satisfaction, and much use of pocket-handkerchiefs.
"'Very fair,' said Mr. Llewellyn Evans. 'He was a very clever man, our old friend.' All the legatees murmured after him 'Very fair!' and a word went round about the home-brewed, and Robert Evans' recipe for it. Then Llewellyn, who thought he ought to be taking the lead at Court now, said it was time to be going to church.
"'There is one matter,' put in Mr. Griffith Hughes, 'which I think ought to be settled while we are all together. You see that there is a-what I may call a charge on the three portions of the property in favour of Miss McNeill.'
"'Indeed, but what is that you are saying?' Llewellyn cried sharply. 'Do you mean that there is a rent charge?'
"'Not exactly a rent charge,' said the lawyer.
"'No!' cried Llewellyn with a twinkle in his eyes. 'Nor any obligation in law whatever?'
"'Well, no,' Mr. Hughes assented grudgingly.
"'Then,' said Llewellyn Evans, getting up and putting his hands in his pockets, while he winked at the others, 'we will talk of that another time.'
"But Mr. Hughes said, 'No!' He was a kind man, and anxious to do the best for the girl, but he somewhat lost his temper. 'No!' he said, growing red. 'You will observe, if you please, Mr. Evans, that the testator says, "Forthwith-forthwith," so that, as sole executor, it is my duty to ask you to state your intentions now.'
"'Well, indeed, then,' said Llewellyn, changing his face to a kind of blank, 'I have no intentions. I think that the family has done more than enough for the girl already.'
"And he would say no other. Nor was it to any purpose that the lawyer looked at Mrs. Llewellyn. She was examining the furniture, and feeling the stuffing of the sofa, and did not seem to hear. He could make nothing of the three Evanses, Nant. They all cried, 'Yes, indeed!' to what Llewellyn said. Only the Evan Bevans remained, and he turned to them.
"'I am sure,' he said, addressing himself to them, 'that you will do something to carry out the testator's wishes? Your share under the will, Mr. Bevan, will amount to three hundred a year. This young lady has nothing-no relations, no home. May I take it that you will settle-say fifty pounds a year upon her? It need only be for her life.'
"Mr. Bevan fidgeted, but his wife answered the lawyer as bold as brass. 'Certainly not, Mr. Hughes,' she said. 'If it were twenty pounds now, once for all, or even twenty-five-and Llewellyn and my nephews would say the same-I think we might manage that?'
"But Llewellyn shook his head obstinately. 'I have said I have no intentions, and I am a man of my word, whatever!' he answered. 'Let the girl go to service. It is what we have wanted her to do. Here are my nephews. They will be liking a young housekeeper.'
"Well, they all laughed at this except Mr. Hughes, who gathered up his papers, looking very black, and not thinking of future clients. Llewellyn, however, did not care a penny for that, but walked to the bell, masterful-like, and rang it. 'Tell the undertaker,' he said to the servant, 'that we are ready.'
"It was as if the words had been a signal, for they were followed by an outcry overhead and quick running upon the stairs. The legatees looked uncomfortably at the carpet; the lawyer was blacker than before. He said to himself, 'It is that poor child that has fainted!' The confusion seemed to last some minutes. Then the door was opened, not by the undertaker, but by Gwen Madoc. The mourners rose, they were thankful to see her; to their surprise she passed by Llewellyn, and with a frightened face walked across to the lawyer. She whispered something in his ear.
"'What!' he cried starting back a pace, and speaking so that the wine-glasses on the table rattled again. 'Do you know what you are saying, woman?'
"'It is true,' she answered, half-crying, 'and no fault of mine neither.' Gwen added more in short sentences, which the family, strain their ears as they might, could not overhear.
"'I will come!' cried the lawyer. He waved his hand to them to make room for her to pass out. Then he turned to them, a queer look upon his face; it was not triumph altogether, for there was some doubt and some alarm in it as well. 'You will believe me,' he said, 'that I am as much taken aback as yourselves-that till this moment I have been as much in the dark as any one. It seems-so I am told-that our old friend is not dead.'
"'What are you meaning!' cried Llewellyn in his turn. 'It is not possible!' and he raised his black-gloved hands.
"'What I say,' Mr. Hughes replied patiently. 'I hear-wonderful as it sounds-that he is not dead. Something about a trance, I believe-a mistake discovered in time. I tell you all I know; and however it comes about, it is clear we ought to be glad that Mr. Robert Evans is spared to us.'
"With that he was glad to escape from the room. When he was gone, I am told that their faces were very strange to see. There was a long silence. Llewellyn was the first to speak. He swore a big oath and banged his great hand upon the table. 'I do not believe it!' he cried. 'I do not believe it! It is a trick!'
"But as he spoke the door opened behind him, and they all turned to see what they had never thought to see, I am sure. They had come to walk in Robert Evans' funeral; and here was the gaunt form of Robert Evans himself coming in, with an arm of Gwen Madoc on one side and of Miss Peggy on the other-Robert Evans beyond doubt alive. Behind him were the lawyer and Dr. Jones, a smile on their lips, and three or four women, half frightened, half wondering.
"The old man was pale, and seemed to totter a little, but when the doctor would have placed a chair for him, he declined it, and stood gazing about him, wonderfully composed for a man just risen from his coffin. He had all his old aspect as he looked upon the family. Llewellyn's declaration was still in their ears, and they could find not a word to say either of joy or grief.
"'Well, indeed,' said Robert, with a dry chuckle, 'have none of you a word to throw at me? I am a ghost, I suppose? Ho, ho!' he exclaimed, as his eye fell on the papers which Mr. Hughes had left upon the table. 'That is why you are not overjoyed at seeing me. You have been reading my will. Well, Llewellyn! Have not you a word to say to me now you know for what I had got you down?'
"At that Llewellyn found his tongue, and the others chimed in finely. Only there was something in the old man's manner that they did not like; and presently, when they had all told him how glad they were to see him again-just for all the world as if he had been ill for a few days-Robert Evans turned again to Llewellyn.
"'You had fixed what you would do for my girl here, I'm thinking?' he said, patting her shoulder gently, at which the family winced. 'It was a hundred a year you promised to settle, you know. You will have arranged, whatever.'
"Llewellyn looked stealthily at Mr. Hughes, who was standing at Robert Evans' elbow, and muttered that they had not reached that stage.
"'What!' the old man cried sharply. 'How was that?'
"'I was intending,' Llewellyn began lamely, 'to settle-'
"'You were intending!' Robert Evans burst forth in a voice so changed that they all started back. 'You are a liar! You were intending to settle nothing! I know it well! I knew it long ago! Nothing, I say! As for you,' he went on, wheeling furiously round upon the Evanses of Nant, 'you knew my wishes. What were you going to do for her? What, I say? Speak, you hobbledehoys!'
"But they were backing from him in absolute fear of his passion, looking at one another or at the sullen face of Llewellyn Evans, or anywhere save at him. At length the eldest blurted out, 'Whatever Llewellyn meant to do, we were going to do, sir.'
"'You speak the truth there,' cried old Robert, bitterly; 'for that was nothing. Very well! I promise you that what Llewellyn Evans gets of my property you shall get too-and it will be nothing! You, Bevan,' and he turned himself towards the Evan Bevans who were shaking in their shoes, 'I am told, did offer to do something for my girl.'
"'Yes, dear Robert,' cried Mrs. Bevan, eagerly, 'we did indeed.'
"'So I hear. Well, when I make my next will, I will set you down for just so much as you proposed to give her! Peggy, bach,' he continued, turning from the lady, who was looking very queer, and putting into the girl's hands the will which the lawyer had given him, 'tear up this rubbish! Tear it up! Now let us have something to eat in the other room. What, Llewellyn Evans, no appetite!'
"But the family did not stay even to partake of the home-brewed. They were out of the house, I am told, before the coffin and the undertaker's men. There was big talking amongst them, as they went, of a conspiracy and a lunatic asylum. But though, to be sure, it was a wonderful recovery, and the doctor and Mr. Hughes as they drove away after dinner were very merry together-which may have been only the home-brewed-at any rate all that came of Llewellyn's talking and inquiries was that every one laughed very much, and Robert Evans' name for a clever man was known beyond Carnarvon.
"Of course it would be open house at Court that day, with plenty of eating and drinking and coming and going. But towards five o'clock the place grew quiet. The visitors had gone home, and Gwen Madoc was upstairs. The old man was sleeping in his chair opposite the settle, and Miss Peggy was sitting on the window-seat watching him, her hands in her lap, and her thoughts far away. Maybe she was trying to be really glad that the home, about which the cows lowed and the gulls screamed in the afternoon stillness that made it seem home each minute, was hers still; that she was not quite alone, nor friendless, nor poor. Maybe she was striving not to think of the thing which had been taken from her and could not be given back. Whatever her thoughts, she was roused by some sound to find her eyes full of hot tears, through which she could see that the old man was awake and looking at her with a strange expression which disappeared as she became aware of it.
"He began to speak. 'Providence has been very good to us, Peggy,' he said with grim meaning. 'It is well for you, my girl, that your eyes are open to see our kind friends as they are. There is one besides those who were here this morning that will wish he had not been so hasty.'
"She rose quickly and looked out of the window. 'Please don't speak of him,' she pleaded in a low tone. 'Let us forget him.'
"But Robert Evans seemed to take a delight in the-well, the goodness of Providence. 'If he had come to see you only once, when you were in trouble,' he said, as if he were summing up the case in his own mind, and she were but a stick or a stone, 'we could have forgiven him, and I would have said you were right. Or even if he had written.'
"'Oh, yes, yes!' the girl sobbed, her tears raining down her averted face. 'Don't torture me! You were right and I was wrong-all wrong!'
"'Yes, indeed! Just so. But come here, my girl,' said the old man. 'Come!' he repeated, as, surprised in the midst of her grief, she wavered and hesitated, 'sit here;' and he pointed to the settle opposite to him. 'Now, suppose I were to tell you he had written, and that the letter had been-mislaid, shall we say? and come somehow to my hands? Now don't get excited, girl!'
"'Oh!' Peggy cried, her lips parted, her eyes wide and frightened, her whole form stiff with a question.
"'Just suppose that, my dear,' continued Robert, 'and that the letter were now before us-would you stand by it? Remember, he must have much to explain. Would you be guided by me, my girl?'
"She was trembling with expectation, hope. But she tried to think of the matter, to remember her lover's flight, the lack of word or message for her, and her misery. She nodded, and held out her hand, for she could not speak.
"He drew a letter from his pocket. 'You will let me see it?' he said suspiciously.
"'Oh yes!' she cried, and fled with it to the window. He watched her while she tore it open and read first one page and then another-there were but two, it was very short. He watched her while she thrust it from her and looked at it as a whole, then drew it to her and kissed it again and again.
"'Wait a bit! wait a bit!' cried he, testily. 'Now let me see it.'
"She turned upon him, holding it away behind her, as if it were some living thing he might hurt. 'He thought he would meet me at the junction,' she stammered between laughing and crying. 'He was going to London to see his sister-that she might take me in. And he will be here to fetch me this evening. There! Take it!' and suddenly remembering herself she stretched out her hand and gave him the letter.
"'You said you would be led by me, you know,' said the old man gravely.
"'I will not!' she cried impetuously. 'Never!'
"'You promised,' he said.
"'I don't care! I don't care!' she replied, clasping her hands. 'No one shall come between us.'
"'Very well,' said Robert Evans, 'then I will not be speaking for nothing! But you had better tell Owen to take the trap to the station to meet your man.'"
THE VICAR'S SECRET
The windows at the rear of Acton Chase, an old house in Worcestershire, look on a quaint bowling-green flanked by yew hedges, and backed by a stream of good size, on the farther side of which a sparsely timbered slope leads up to the home farm. It leads also to half a dozen smaller farms, which once formed the Chase. Zigzag up this slope runs a track-probably it has so run for centuries, for at the foot of it is a ford-which in spring is almost invisible, but in autumn is brown and rutty. The Chase has long been a Roman Catholic house, and up this track dead-and-gone squires, debarred from converse with their neighbours, have ridden a-hunting, mornings innumerable; so that to-day people sitting in the garden towards evening are apt to see them come trailing home, their horses jaded, and themselves calling for the black-jack.
Our story is not of these, but of two men who strolled down this path on an evening no farther back than last August. They seemed, outwardly at least, ill-matched. The one, a young fellow under thirty, fair-haired, pink-cheeked, prim-looking, was of middle size. He was dressed as a clergyman, but more neatly and trimly than the average country clergyman dresses. The other was one of the tallest and thinnest men ever seen outside a show-a man whose very clothes, his worn jacket and shrunken knickerbockers, had the air of sharing his attenuation. He looked like a gamekeeper, and was, in fact, the squire's son-in-law, Jim Foley.
"I really cannot make you out," he said, as the two sighted the house; and, shifting his gun to the other shoulder, he took occasion to glance at his companion. "What do you do, old boy? You never kill anything, unless it is a trout now and then. Now I could not live without killing. Must kill something every day!"
"And do you?"
"Seldom miss," the long man rejoined cheerfully, "except on a hunting day when we draw blank. Rats, rabbits, otters, pike, sometimes a hawk, sometimes, as to-day, a brace of wood-pigeons. And game and foxes in their season. Must kill something, my boy."
His companion glanced at him, looked away again, and sighed.
"Well, what is that for?" Foley asked, in the tone of an aggrieved man.
"I was only thinking," the other replied drily, "what a lucky fellow you were to have nothing to do but kill."
The tall man whistled. "I say," he said, "for a man who is to be married in a week or so, you are in roaring spirits, ain't you? I tell you what it is, my boy; you do not take very kindly to your bliss. I can see Patty flitting about in the garden like a big white moth, waiting, I have no doubt, for a word with her lord; and your step lags, and your face is grave, and you try to be cynical! What is up?"
The younger man laughed, but not merrily; and there was a tinge of sullenness in his tone as he answered, "Nothing! A man cannot always be grinning."
"No; but pâti de foie gras is not a man's ordinary meat," Jim retorted imperturbably. "Jones!"
"Well?" the other said snappishly.
"You are in a mess, my boy-that is my opinion! Now, don't take it amiss," Jim continued drily. "I am within my rights. I am one of the family, and if the squire is blind and Patty is young, I am neither. And I am not going to let this go on until I know more, my boy. You have something on your mind of which they are ignorant."
The young clergyman turned his face to his companion, and Jim Foley, albeit of the coolest, was taken aback by the change which anger or some other emotion had wrought in it. Even the clergyman's voice was altered. "And what if I have?" he said, stopping so suddenly that the two confronted one another. "What if I have, Mr. Foley?"
Jim deliberately shut his eyes and opened them, to make sure that the tragic spirit, so suddenly infused into the pleasant landscape, with its long shadows and its distant forge-note, was no delusion. Satisfied, he rose to the occasion. "This," he said, outwardly unmoved. "You must get rid of it. That is all, Jones."
"And if I cannot?"
"Will not, you mean."
"No, cannot!" the clergyman replied with vehemence.
"Then," Jim drawled-"I am not a moral man, don't mistake me, but I belong to the family-your majesty must go elsewhere for a wife! And a little late to do so!" he continued, harshness in his tone. "What! you are not coming to the house?"
"No!" the other cried violently. And, without a word of farewell, he turned his back on his companion, and strode away through the lush grass to a point a little higher up the stream, where a plank-bridge gave access to the Chase outbuildings, and through them to the village.
Foley stood awhile, looking after him. "Well," he said, speaking gently, as if rallying himself on some weakness, "I am afraid-I really am afraid that I am a little astonished. I should know men by now, yet I did think that if any one could show a clean bill of health it was the vicar. He is smug, he is next door to a prig. The old women swear by him, the young ones dote on him. They say he is on foot from morning till night, and not one blank day in a fortnight! And now-pheugh! I wonder whether I ought to have knocked him down. Poor little Patty! There is not a better girl in the country-except the Partridge!"
He looked pathetically at the gardens below him; then, seeing that the chimneys of the house were smoking briskly, he bethought him of dinner, and strode down to the gate with his usual air of insouciance.
Meanwhile the young clergyman gained the side avenue, and walked rapidly towards the village, his eyes dazzled by the low beams of the sun which shone in his face, and his mind confounded by the tumult of his thoughts. A crisis which he had long foreseen, often dreaded, and as often postponed, was now imminent, the power to control it gone from his hands. He looked on the past with regret, and forward with shame. That which had once been feasible-nay, as it seemed to him now, easy-time and his cowardice had rendered impossible. He stood aghast at his own feebleness; not considering that the routine of parish work and the satisfaction derived from small duties done, had weakened his moral fibre; even as the peace of the life about him, and the transparent truthfulness of those, with whom his lot was cast, had made the task of disclosure more formidable. He had fallen-no, he had not fallen; but he had put off the act which honour demanded so long that, though the day of grace was still his, there could be no grace in the doing.
The rooks, streaming homeward in some order of their own, were cawing overhead as he opened the gate and entered the vicarage garden, where the great hollyhocks stood in rows, and the peaches, catching the last rays of the sun aslant, were glowing against the southern gable. To the stranger-to the American, in particular-who looked in as he passed, it seemed a paradise, that garden. But-for peaches are not peace, nor hollyhocks either-its owner passed through it with compressed lips and tingling cheeks. He entered the porch, where one or two packing-cases told of coming changes; then he stood irresolute in the cool hall, remembering that he had intended to dine at the Chase, and that there was nothing prepared for him here. Not that he had an appetite, but dinner was a decent observance, and it seemed to him that not to dine would be to lose his hold on life and fall into abysses before his time.
It is well, when we are unfortunate, to consider how much worse a minute, a few seconds, may see us. A faint sound at his elbow caused him to turn. The door of the dining-room was ajar, and through the opening a face peered at him. The young vicar did not start, but he drew a deep breath, and stiffened as he gazed. A minute, and his lips-while the other face, with a shifty smile, half mockery, half shame, returned his look-formed the word "Father!"
It was not audible two paces away. But as it fell the clergyman glanced round with a gesture of alarm, and at a single stride he was in the dining-room, and had shut the door behind him. The other man-a shambling creature, grey-haired and blear-eyed and unwashed, with a beard of a week's growth-fell back to the table and leaned against it. His rusty black clothes and his broken boots seemed to share, rather than to impart, the look of decay which marked his person. The vicar, with his back against the door, looked at him and shuddered, and then looked again, his face hard and his eyes gloomy. "Well," he said, in a low stern voice, "what is the meaning of this? You know our agreement. Why have you broken it, sir?"
The old man pursed up his lips, and, with his head on one side, contemplated his questioner in silence. Then he said suddenly, "Blow the agreement!"
The vicar winced as if he had been struck. But he found words again.
"If you can do without the money," he said, "so much the better. But-"
"Blow the money!" cried the old man, with the same violence. Notwithstanding his words, he stood in awe of his son, and was trying to gain courage by working himself into a passion. "What is money?" he continued. "I want no money! I am coming to live with you. You are going to be married. I heard of it, though you kept it close, my boy! I heard of it, and I said to myself, 'Good! I will go and live with my boy. And his wife shall take care of my little comforts.'"
The younger man shivered. He thought of Patty, and he looked at the old man before him, sly, vicious, gin-sodden-and his father! "You do not want to live with me," he answered coldly. "You could not bear to live with me for one week, and you know it. Will you tell me what you do want, and why you have left Glasgow?"
"To congratulate you!" his father answered, with a drunken chuckle. "Walter Jones and Patty Stanton-third time of asking! Oh, I heard of it! But not through you. Why," he continued, with a quick change to ferocity, "would you not ask your own father to your wedding, you ungrateful boy?"
"No," the vicar replied sternly, "he being such as he is, I would not."
"Oh, you are ashamed of him, are you? You have kept him dark, I fancy?" the old man replied, grinning with wicked enjoyment as he saw how his son winced at each sentence, how his colour went and came. "Well, now you will have the pleasure of introducing me to the squire, and to daughter Patty, and to all your friends. It will be a pleasant surprise for them. I'll be bound you said I was dead."
"I have not said you were dead."
"Don't you wish I was?"
"God keep me from it!" the vicar groaned.
On that, the two men stood looking at each other, the one neat, clean-shaven, conventional, the other vile with the degradation of drink. Though the windows stood open, the room was full of the smell of spirits, and seemed itself soiled and degraded. Suddenly the younger man sat down at the table, and, burying his face between his hands, fell into a storm of weeping.
His father shifted his feet, and licking his lips nervously, looked at him in maudlin shame; then from him to the sideboard, in search of his supporter under all trials. But the sideboard was bare, the doors closed, the key invisible. Mr. Jones grew indignant. "There, stop that foolery!" he said brutally. "You make me sick."
The rough adjuration restored the young man's nerve, and he looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. Tears in a man are shameful; but this tragedy was one not to be evaded by manliness, or, indeed, by any help of men. "Tell me what it is you want," he said wearily.
"More money," his father snarled. The liquor with which he had primed himself was losing its effect. "I cannot live on what you give me. Glasgow is a dear place. The money ought to be mine; all of it!"
"You have had two hundred a year-one-half of my mother's money."
"I know. I want three."
"Well, you cannot have it," the son answered languidly. "If you must know, I have agreed to settle one-half of my income on my wife now, and the other half at your death. Therefore it will not be in my power to allow you more. You have spent your own fortune, and you have no claim on my mother's money."
"Very well," Mr. Jones answered, his head trembling with rage and weakness. "Then I stay with you. I stay here. Your father-in-law that is to be will be glad to meet his old friend again-I have no doubt. We were at college together. I dare say he will acknowledge me, if my own son is too proud to do so. I shall stay here until I am tired of the country."
The young man looked at him in despair. Supplication he knew would avail him nothing, and the only threat he could use-that he would stop his father's allowance-would have no terrors, for he could not execute it. To let his father go to the workhouse would increase the scandal a hundred times. He rose at last and went out. His housekeeper had come in, and he told her, keeping his burning face averted, to prepare a bed and get supper for two. He shrank-he whose life in Acton had been so full of propriety-from saying who his guest was. Let his father proclaim himself if he would; that would be less painful. The truth must out. Once before, at his first curacy, the young man, younger then and more hopeful, had tried the work of reformation. He had made a home for his father, and done what he could. And the end had been hot, flaming shame, and an exposure which had driven him to the other end of England.
When he left the house next morning, though his mind was made up to go to the squire and tell him all, he lingered on the white dusty road. The sunlight fell about him in dazzling chequers, and, save for the humming of the bees overhead and the whirr of a reaping-machine in a neighbouring field, the stillness of the August noon hung with the haze over the landscape. His heart, despite his resolution, grew hot within him, as he looked around, and contrasted the peacefulness of nature with the tumult of shame and agitation in his own breast. There was the school which he opened with prayers four times a week. Between the trees he caught a grey glimpse of the church-his church. As he looked his secret grew more sordid, more formidable.
He turned at last with an effort to enter the gates, and saw Patty and her sister, Mrs. Foley, coming down the avenue. They were still a long way off, their light frocks and parasols flitting from sunlight to shadow, and shadow to sunlight, as they advanced. The young man halted. Had Patty been alone, he would have gone to her and told her all; and surely, surely, though he doubted it at this moment, he would have won comfort-for love laughs at vicarious shame. But the Partridge's presence frightened him. Mrs. Foley, round and small and plump, in all things the antithesis of her husband, had yet imbibed something of Jim's dryness. The vicar feared her under the present circumstances, and he turned and fled down the road. He would let them pass-probably they were going to the vicarage-and he would then step up and see the squire.
He was right in supposing that the ladies were going to the vicarage. As they went in that direction, they came upon a strange dissolute old man whom they eyed with wondering dislike, and to whom they gave a wide berth as they passed. They had not gone by long before a third person came through the lodge gates and sauntered after them. This was Jim Foley, come out, with his hands in his pockets and a one-eyed terrier at his heels, to smoke his morning pipe. He, too, espied the old toper, and at sight of him took his pipe from his mouth and stood in the middle of the road, an expression of surprise on his features; while Mr. Jones, becoming aware of him too late-for his faculties were not of the sharpest in the morning-also stood by some instinct and looked, with a growing sense of unpleasant recognition, at his lanky figure.
"Hallo!" said Jim. Mr. Jones did not answer, but stood blinking in the sunshine. He looked more blear-eyed and shabby, more hopelessly gone to seed, than he had looked in the vicarage dining-room.