There came a day when the folk of Deadborough were started from their wonted apathy by the apparition of a Strange Man. They saw him first as he drove from the station in a splendid carriage-and-pair, with a coronet on its panels. Seated in the carriage was a venerable being with a swarthy countenance and headgear of the whitest--such was the brief vision. Other carriages followed in due course, for there was an illustrious house-party at Deadborough Hall--the owner of which was not only a slayer of pheasants, but a reader of books and a student of things. He had gathered together the Bishop of the Diocese, a Cabinet Minister, two eminent philosophers, the American Ambassador, a leading historian, and a Writer on the Mystics. To these was added--for he deserves a sentence to himself--an Orientalist of world-wide reputation. All were gathered for the purpose of meeting Chandrapal. By the charm of his manners, by his urbanity, by his brilliant and thought-provoking conversation, the Oriental repaid his host a hundred times over. To most of his fellow-guests he played the part of teacher, while seeming to act that of disciple; but to none was his manner so deferential and his air of attention so profound as to the great Orientalist. And yet in the secret heart of Chandrapal this was the man for whom he felt the deepest compassion. He found, indeed, that the great man's reputation had not belied him; he was versed in the wisdom of the East and in the tongues which had spoken it; he knew the path to the Great Peace as well as the sage knew it himself; but when Chandrapal looked into his restless eyes and heard the hard tones of his voice, he perceived that no soul on earth was further from the Great Peace than this. With the two philosophers Chandrapal spent many hours in close debate. He spoke to them of the Bhagavad Gita and of Spinoza. He found that of the Bhagavad Gita they knew little--and they cared less. Of Spinoza they knew much and understood nothing--thus thought he. So he turned to other topics and conversed fluently on the matters dearest to their hearts--namely, their own works, with which he was well acquainted. They, on their part, had never met a listener more sympathetic, a critic more acute. Chandrapal left upon them the impression of his immense capacity for assimilating the products of Western thought; also the belief that they had thoroughly rifled his brains.