Langham not only endured, but enjoyed the first part of the hour that followed. Robert was an admirable reader, as most enthusiastic, imaginative people are. He was a master of all those arts of look and gesture which make a spoken story telling and dramatic, and Langham marvelled with what energy, after his hard day’s work and with another service before him, he was able to throw himself into such a hors-d’œuvre as this. He was reading to night one of the most perfect scenes that even the Wizard of the North has ever conjured: the scene in the tent of Richard Lion-Heart, when the disguised slave saves the life of the king, and Richard first suspects his identity. As he read on, his arms resting on the high desk in front of him, and his eyes, full of infectious enjoyment, travelling from the book to his audience, surrounded by human beings whose confidence he had won, and whose lives he was brightening from day to day, he seemed to Langham the very type and model of a man who had found his _métier_, found his niche in the world, and the best means of filling it. If to attain to an ‘adequate and masterly expression of oneself’ be the aim of life, Robert was achieving it. This parish of twelve hundred souls gave him now all the scope he asked. It was evident that he felt his work to be rather above than below his deserts. He was content--more than content to spend ability which would have distinguished him in public life, or carried him far to the front in literature, on the civilizing a few hundred of England’s rural poor. The future might bring him worldly success--Langham thought it must and would. Clergymen of Robert’s stamp are rare among us. But if so, it would be in response to no conscious effort of his. Here, in the country living he had so long dreaded and put from him, less it should tax his young energies too lightly, he was happy--deeply, abundantly happy, at peace with God, at one with man. _Happy!_ Langham, sitting at the outer corner of one of the benches, by the open door, gradually ceased to listen, started on other lines of thought by this realization, warm, stimulating, provocative, of another man’s happiness.