"Dinner when, where, and how it comes! Tea sounds capital--with supper after my meeting. I say, Jack, it's good to see you again!" "Wish you'd stay here, lad. I'm much alone these days--with the old gentleman gone, and poor Nancy gone!" "Perhaps I shall. Anyhow I might stay here for the summer, and go up to town to the office." "Aye, you might do that, anyhow." Again Jack Rock seemed meditative, as though he had an idea and were half-minded to disclose it. But he was a man of caution; he bided his time. Andy--nobody had ever called him Andrew since the parson who christened him--seemed to himself to have got home again, very thoroughly home again. Montreal with its swelling hill, its mighty river, its winter snow, its Frenchness, its opposing self-defensive, therefore self-assertive, Britishness, was very remote. A talk with Jack Rock, a Conservative meeting with a squire in the chair (that was safely to be assumed), a meet of the hounds next morning--these and a tide of intimate personal memories stamped him as at home again. The long years in the little house at the extreme end of Highcroft--Highcroft led out of High Street, tending to the west, Fyfold way--in the old grammar school, in the peace of the sleepy town--had been a poignant memory in South Africa, a fading dream in the city by the great river. They sprang again into actuality. If he felt a certain contraction in his horizon he felt also a peace in his mind. Meriton might or might not admire "hustlers;" it did not hustle itself. It was a parasitic little town; it had no manufactures, no special industry. It lived on the country surrounding it--on the peasants, the farmers, the landowners. So it did not grow; neither did it die. It remained much as it had been for hundreds of years, save that it was seriously considering the introduction of electric light. The meeting was rather of an impromptu order; Christmas holidays are generally held sacred from such functions. But Mr. Foot, M.P., a rising young member and a friend of Harry Belfield's, happened to be staying at Halton Park for shooting. Why waste him? He liked to speak, and he spoke very well. The more Harry showed himself and got himself heard, the better. The young men would enjoy it. A real good dinner beforehand would send them down in rare spirits. A bit of supper, with a whisky-and-soda or two, and recollections of their own "scores," would end the evening pleasantly. Meriton would not be excited--it was not election time--but it would be amused, benevolent, and present in sufficiently large numbers to make the thing go with _éclat_.