‘I find myself a good deal reconciled to life by this migration of Mine,’ wrote Langham, ‘Now that my enforced duties to them are all done with, my fellow-creatures seem to me much more decent fellows than before. The great stir of London, in which, unless I please, I have no part whatever, attracts me more than I could have thought possible. No one in these noisy streets has any rightful claim upon me. I have cut away at one stroke lectures, and Boards of Studies, and tutors’ meetings, and all the rest of the wearisome Oxford make-believe, and the creature left behind feels lighter and nimbler than he has felt for years. I go to concerts and theatres; I look at the people in the streets; I even begin to take an outsider’s interest in social questions, in the puny dikes, which well-meaning people are trying to raise all round us against the encroaching, devastating labor-troubles of the future. By dint of running away from life, I may end by cutting a much more passable figure in it than before. Be consoled, my dear Elsmere; reconsider your remonstrances.’ There, under the great cedar by the gate, stood Mr. Wendover. Illumined as he was by the spring sunshine, he struck Elsmere as looking unusually shrunken and old. And yet under the look of physical exhaustion there was a now serenity, almost a peacefulness of expression, which gave the whole man a different aspect. ‘Don’t take me far,’ he said abruptly, as they started. ‘I have not got the energy for it. I have been over-working and must go away.’ ‘I have been sure of it for some time,’ said Elsmere warmly. ‘You ought to have a long rest. But mayn’t I know, Mr. Wendover, before you take it, what this great task is you have been toiling at? Remember, you have never told me a word of it.’ And Elsmere’s smile had in it a touch of most friendly reproach. Fatigue had left the scholar relaxed, comparatively defenseless. His sunk and wrinkled eyes lit up with a smile, faint indeed, but of unwonted softness. ‘A task indeed,’ he said with a sigh, ‘the task of a life-time. To-day I finished the second third of it. Probably before the last section is begun some interloping German will have stepped down before me; it is the way of the race! But for the moment there is the satisfaction of having come to an end of some sort--a natural halt, at any rate.’ Elsmere’s eyes were still interrogative. ‘Oh, well,’ said the Squire, hastily, ‘it is a book I planned just after I took my Doctor’s degree at Berlin. It struck me then as the great want of modern scholarship. It is a History of Evidence, or rather, more strictly, “A History of _Testimony_.”’ Robert started. The library flashed into his mind, and Langham’s figure in the long gray coat sitting on the stool. ‘A great subject,’ he said slowly, ‘a magnificent subject. How have you conceived it I wonder?’