Mrs. Samptor divined rightly. The Collector's first impressions of his new Assistant were deeply favourable, and they arose partly from the very point which Mrs. Goldring deemed would prove fatal--the disclosure of his alleged social disabilities. Mark Cheveril had not been in Madras for more than three days without hearing remarks concerning his future chief which would have caused some natures to have assumed from the outset a defensive attitude. But no sooner had he entered the Collector's bungalow than he felt drawn to the lonely man, careless in dress and manner, hardly rising to greet his visitor from the long armed chair where he lounged, smoking a cheroot, surrounded by two faithful dogs. In a few moments Mark was occupying a similar chair by his side, being introduced to his dogs and his cheroots, and feeling completely at home. Crotchety, querulous, quarrelsome, Felix Worsley might be, as alleged; but somehow the young man felt instinctively that whatever his faults of manner and circumstances, "in him there nothing common was or mean." The man was a noble English gentleman to the core. Mistakes he might have made in governing his allotted territory, but they would prove mistakes of head not of heart. Before his Trichy smouldered in ashes, Mark's heart had already gone out to his chief with the liking of quick magnetism meeting a response, and it brought a light into Felix Worsley's eyes seldom visible there in these later days. How different, for instance, had been Alfred Rayner's reception of his avowal of mixed blood from that of the man by whose side he sat, telling him that his link with the country had already fostered sympathy with the people of his native land! "Well, it begins to dawn on me now that I'm very near the end," was the Collector's slowly enunciated reply. "A downright enthusiast like you is what we need here. No doubt, Cheveril, I'll often be for your holding the reins tight, but I'll try to give you as much rope as I can, my boy. I'm weary and baffled--dead tired of the whole game of life long ago. But it must go on--even Mrs. Samptor's tea-party." With that he had risen from his chair, and on the way thither had shared with the new-comer kindly but illuminating comments on the little circle, so that when Mark stood on Mrs. Samptor's lawn he seemed to know them all. The game of croquet, which he had been playing with Mrs. Samptor as partner, was triumphantly finished, much to the little lady's satisfaction; and Mark was now eager to avail himself of his freedom to listen to the Judge's conversation. This was followed by the Superintendent's annals of the jail, which he undertook to show him over one day before long. "We must get you interested in your nearest surroundings before the Collector carries you off on tour through his territory," he said, with a good-natured smile.