"Well, I'm damned!" he cried at last. Robert Carlton sat asleep in his chair, his hands in his overcoat pockets, the collar turned up about his ears. His boots and trousers were brown and yellow with the dust of the district. In an instant he was on his feet, scared, startled, and abashed. "So you've come back, have you?" "An hour or two ago. I walked from Cambridge. I don't know how you heard!" "Heard? You must think me in a hurry for your society! No, this is an unexpected pleasure, and I use the words advisedly. It's something to find you don't come twice in broad daylight." "I have come on business, as before, but this time the business will occupy more than a few minutes. I wished to get it in train with as little fuss as possible. Then I was coming to see you, Sir Wilton." It was quietly spoken, without bitterness or defiance, but also without the abject humility which had trembled in the clergyman's first words. The other made some attempt to modify his manner: nothing could put him in the wrong, but he realised that it might be as well to abstain from mere brutality. And what he had just heard implied a certain reassurance. "I see," said Gleed. "You have come to make arrangements about your furniture and effects. I am glad to hear it." "My furniture and effects?" queried Carlton. "What arrangements do you mean?" "Well, you can't leave them here, can you?" "Why not, Sir Wilton?" "Why not!" echoed the squire, turning from pink to purple with the two words. "Because you've been disgraced and degraded as you deserve; because you're the hound you are; because you've been suspended for five years, and I won't have you or your belongings cumber my ground for a single day of them! So now you know," continued Gleed in lower tones, his venom spent. "I didn't think it would be necessary to tell you my opinion of you; but you've brought it on yourself." Carlton bowed to that, but respectfully pointed out the difference between suspension and deprivation, his tone one of apology rather than of triumph. "I don't say which I deserved," he added, "but I do thank God for the mercy He has shown me. This gives me another chance--in five years' time. Meanwhile I am not only entitled to keep my furniture in the rectory. I believe I may live in it if I like." Gleed stood convulsed with wrath redoubled. He had been too busy in town to prime himself upon a point which could not arise before he went down to the country; and here it was, awaiting him. His disadvantage alone was enough to put him in a passion; but the last statement was monstrous in itself. "I don't believe it! I don't believe a word you say! A man who can live a lie will tell nothing else!" Carlton drew himself up, his nostrils curling. "Better go and ask your solicitor," he said. "I have forfeited the right--as you so well know--to the only possible reply."