The intimacy went on for more than a year, during which time the tranquil, gentle countenance of Gilbert Langstroth, with its slight, tolerant smile, was to be seen oftener than not side by side with the strange, fierce face of Otho Askam, with its breathless expression. ‘He looks,’ said a girl to Michael once, ‘as if he were always hunting something, and meant to kill it when he caught it.’ It was undoubtedly a bizarre alliance, but at the end of a year people had, in a measure, got to accept it, and it was an understood thing that its effect upon Gilbert was one which he was quite able to sustain with impunity; in other words, that, whatever might be the case with Otho Askam, Gilbert Langstroth continued to be a respectable member of society, and was not even thinking of going to the bad. CHAPTER II MAGDALEN—AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD Otho’s arrival had been in the early part of October. The intimacy between him and Gilbert gradually increased, and the visits of the friends were not by any means confined to one party of the alliance. Otho was found as often seated in an old arm-chair in some one of the now faded and shabby rooms of the Red Gables, as Gilbert was in the statelier and better preserved apartments of Thorsgarth. Gilbert and his father lived alone together. They had so lived ever since Michael, having finished his medical studies, had come back and been made Dr. Rowntree’s assistant. Mr. Langstroth was one of those men who undoubtedly exist, who, by some means not to be accounted for by any personal charm or fascination, always have either a devoted wife or a friend who seems willing, nay, eager to give of his strength in order to make up for their weaknesses. So long as his wife had been living, Mr. Langstroth had had a prop. After her death, her place, as prop, had been taken by Dr. Rowntree, an old ‘friend of the family,’ whose yellow-washed house, with its green door and brass knocker, stood almost opposite the Red Gables, on the other side of the broad old square which formed the west end of Bradstane town. Dr. Rowntree had indeed been one of those friends who stick closer than a brother, who get little and give much, and who seem quite satisfied so long as they may go on giving, and get an occasional word significative of trust or appreciation. Sometimes it seems as if they could exist without even so much aliment for their regard. It was at his instigation and by his advice that Michael had adopted the medical profession as his calling in life. Something had to be done; their fortunes no longer permitted idleness on the part even of the eldest son of the house. Michael was utterly disinclined for the church, and his father for the expense of preparing him to enter it. For ‘doctoring,’ as they roughly and ignorantly called the healing art, he had always shown a liking; and, as most of his spare time had always been spent at the little Quaker