"The Reverend Mr. Folyat to see you." James Lawrie was sitting at the table engrossed in a game of dominoes. He looked up at Francis and nodded, and pointed with the stem of his pipe to a chair on the other side of the table. Francis took it, and Tibby left them. Old Lawrie rattled the dice and turned up a six and three. He grunted: "Can't do it. H'm. H'm. Can't borrow again. No more credit. Will you join me, sir?" "Gladly," said Francis, and they began to play. They played for an hour in silence, and Francis won three times to his opponent's twice. "You'll be a college man, sir?" asked old Lawrie. "Dublin," said Francis, and helped himself to tobacco from the greasy old pouch that lay on the table. "I've a great reverence for college men, having missed it myself. I had two or three friends in Edinburgh, but I was never there except in their letters. I've never been anywhere except in books, and wherever I go, and whatever I do, and whatever I be, I think there's always the printed page between me and myself. . . . Do you understand that?" "I don't think so." "It's like this. There's such a thing as a habit of loneliness, and if it really fastens on a man there's nothing can break through it, not love, not misery, not great joy, nor a wife and bairns, nothing. Living like that, a man gets a clear brain like a searchlight so that he can see all his comings out and his goings in and the play of his thoughts, honest and dishonest, and he prowls about and about his own self like a caged beast. Do you know that?" "Something like it."