His son, however, met him at the great gates, whole and sound, but with a grave face. "You are too late, sir," he said quietly. But he flushed a little at the grasp of his father's hand, and a little more when the Archdeacon told him to pay the cabman a double fare. "I have brought you here for nothing. He died a quarter of an hour ago, sinking very rapidly after I sent to you." "Who? Who died?" the Archdeacon asked, pressing one hand heavily on the other's shoulder, as they walked back towards the bridge. "Mr. Kent." The elder man said nothing for a while--aloud at least. But presently he asked Jack to tell him about it. "There is little to tell. After we left him he went out. Going home late last night, and not I fear sober, he was run down by a road-car. When they brought him to the hospital he was hopelessly injured, but quite sensible. They fetched his daughter, and then he asked for me--as your son. He did not know my address, but the assistant-surgeon happened to be a friend of mine, and did, and he sent a cab for me." And really that seemed all. "It is very, very sudden; but--Heaven forgive me!--I cannot regret his death," the clergyman said. "It is impossible." They had reached the corner of the bridge. "There is something else I should tell you," Jack said nervously. "When he had sent for me he had a lawyer brought, and made his will." "His will!" the Archdeacon repeated, somewhat startled. "Had he anything to leave?" He asked the question, rather in pity for so wretched a creature as the man seemed to him, than out of curiosity. "If we may believe him," Jack said slowly, "and I think he was telling the truth, he was worth thirty thousand pounds." "Impossible!" the Archdeacon cried. "I do not know," replied Jack. "But we shall learn. He said he had made it in oil, and had come home a poor man to see how his wife and child would receive him. I do not think he was all bad," Jack continued thoughtfully. "There must have been a streak of romance in him." "I fear," the Archdeacon muttered very sensibly, "that it is all romance!" But it was not all romance; there is oil in the States yet, and Mr. Kent, of whom since he is dead we all speak with respect, by hook or crook had got his share. The thirty thousand pounds were discovered pleasantly fructifying in Argentine railways, and proved as many reasons why Mrs. Yale, when Jack's fate became known to her, should smile again. The Archdeacon put it neatly: To marry an actress is a grave offence because a common one, and one easily committed; but to marry an actress with thirty thousand pounds! Such ladies are not blackberries, not do they grow on every bush.