"I hope I'm not intruding, Mr. Morpeth. I thought I should like to begin my calls by taking advantage of your kind invitation to come and have a talk with you." "A kind and gracious thought, Mr. Cheveril. You come to cheer a lonely old man." "But you have many interests, many solaces, Mr. Morpeth. I heard you singing like a true musician as I reached your verandah. In fact, I must plead guilty to eavesdropping. Both the air and the words were new to me and held me." "Yes, it's a favourite of mine. But you from England must be familiar with all Charles Wesley's hymns?" "I fear you credit me with more knowledge about many good things than I can lay claim to, Mr. Morpeth. Hymnology has not been much of a study with me." "Ah, but you must make the acquaintance of Charles Wesley. There is real poetry in his hymns, much more than in his brother John's. They have a beautiful haunting power which the others lack. I was glad to find that pearl among English deans--Stanley--acknowledging this in one of his books lately. But what am I thinking about, Mr. Cheveril? This is not the hour to linger in the verandah! Come and seek the coolness of my homely den here." Mr. Morpeth led the way into the drawing-room of the house which had been fitted up as a library. In the rows of teakwood dwarf-bookcases, raised from the ground by carved lions _couchants_ high enough above the matting to protect them from the ravages of white ants, were well-filled shelves of books. A case from home lay half unpacked on the floor. A roomy writing-table with well-filled pigeon-holes showed traces of manifold labours. The furnishing of the room evidently belonged to a period when it was possible to get good wood, before so many of the great forest trees were cut down. The polished chunam of the walls told of days when coolies were plentiful and lent the strength of their sinewy arms to rub the shell-lime till it gleamed like marble, even in the light of day. "What a delightful room!" exclaimed Mark. "It looks more English than anything I've seen here, and yet you've never been----" He paused without finishing his sentence as he glanced at the brown-skinned man. "Never been in England? No, and I fear I never shall be, though it used to be my dream in the years when I was too poor to carry it out. Yet I see now there came a time when I ought to have gone to England--but regrets are vain," he added, and a look of trouble stole into his eyes.