The old place seemed to have dwindled a little in the years; Charlie, reaching it in the evening, felt that he understood, resentfully and yet pityingly enough, that a man who had lived so many years in its narrowness, and in the midst of its petty happenings, must necessarily fail to understand that broader life and that bigger world in which he himself had flung away his substance. Above all things, his father was not a man in whom there was any real live blood; he was a creature (or so Charlie felt) in whom passions and hopes and ambitions had died long since, giving place to the mere desire to live comfortably and at peace with his neighbours. How could he understand the game of life as Charlie had played it? The rectory looked grim and forbidding when he got to it; some memory of days when, as a boy, he had crept back half exultantly and half in fear from some escapade came full upon him; this seemed to be just such another home-coming. He would not go in yet; he would wait, and rehearse again what he meant to say, and rehearse it better. He went on past the rectory--past the old house where Paul Nannock had lived so long ago, as it seemed--and so to the little churchyard adjoining the church. There were lights in the windows of the church, and the sound of the wheezy old organ, and of voices accompanying it, floated out into the darkness. Charlie leaned against the wall of the churchyard and waited; now making up his mind to go and face his father boldly; now determining to remain where he was, until he had his lesson more complete in his mind. While he debated, the organ gasped and wheezed and was still; a door at the side of the church was opened, and some dim figures came out, snuggling their necks into the collars of overcoats and jackets. Almost the last of them was a bent figure that exchanged salutations with them, and then, turning, came on towards where Charlie was waiting. He knew the figure before it reached him for that of his father. The Rev. Temple Purdue stopped within a yard or so of him, and scanned him closely for a moment; then held out his hand. In that first gesture there was a natural warmth, as from the father to the son; a moment later he had checked it, and it was the grave salutation of the man with a painful duty to perform. Charlie stiffened at the altered touch, and hardened himself to meet what was to come. "I thought I'd better come up and see you," said Charlie, standing stiff and aggressive, and towering by many inches above the little rector. "I suppose I'm in for a wigging--eh?" "Charlie!--Charlie!--have you nothing else to say to me than that?" "What am I to say?" retorted the other. "I suppose you'd call me a lost sheep, and goodness knows what else; and I suppose it'd be all true. We look at things from opposite points of view--you and I."