He himself came of clerical stock. His grandfather had been one of the Golden Canons of Durham, and as a child, as a youth, he had lived much in the more prosperous section of the Church of England. Often in the holidays he had accompanied relations on calls to rectories and vicarages which were as poverty-stricken, as full of self-respecting economy, as was this house. In those days all Lingard's instinct had stood up in rebellion against the clerical atmosphere in which he was being bred. But with years there came across him a queer feeling of loyalty to the cloth, to what had been his father's cloth. Poor young Kaye! And yet most fortunate young Kaye. Such was Lingard's involuntary thought as he glanced round the homely room--for the lad whose mother stood there mourning him had known that a devoted father and mother watched with solicitude, with pride, with anxiety, every step of his career. How different from Lingard's own case!--deprived of his parents in babyhood, and with none to care whether he did well in his profession or whether he went to the devil--as he had so very nearly gone to the devil some twenty years ago. As he shook hands with the grey-haired woman who stood there with so tragic, so oppressed, a look on her face, there came across him the thought of his own long dead mother, and for a moment he was freed of the terrible happenings of the last few hours. With an effort he set himself to remember all that he had heard to Bayworth Kaye's credit. Those who had mentioned him had nearly all of them alluded to his reckless bravery, to his indifference to physical danger, to his Victoria Cross.... Ah! it was easy to utter a eulogy of such a son when speaking to the bereaved mother. It was so strange, so tragic, too, that he should have died in the way he had died, of fever. Lingard remembered hearing of the alternate hours of anxiety, of hope, and lastly of despair, through which the unfortunate parents had passed between the time they had first heard of their son's illness and of his lonely death. Mrs. Kaye listened to the kind, heartfelt words of condolence, of respectful pity for herself and for her husband, in silence; and the eyes which she kept fixed on Lingard's face were tearless and very bright. Lingard, moving a little uneasily under their fixed scrutiny, asked himself whether she really heard and understood what he was saying? So far, she had not asked him to sit down.