If Henry could have looked inward then he would have seen that all his uneasiness came from the dragging of the old anchor of faith which began long ago at Laysford on his first meeting with Mr. Puddephatt. That, and naught else. Edward John believed in the Bible _verbatim et litteratim_; worshipped it with the superstitious awe wherewith a sentimental woman bobs to tuppenceworth of stucco and a penn'orth of paint fashioned into a Bambino; would have believed it implicitly had the story ran that Jonah swallowed the whale; and often, indeed, expressed his readiness for that supreme test of faith. To Henry, as to every young man who thinks, came the inevitable collision between inherited belief and acquired knowledge. Also the inevitable wreckage. Many thousands had gone his road before him, and more will follow. To the father the roads of Knowledge and of Faith ran neatly parallel, the one narrow and the other broad; but as the son laboured at the widening of the former, the road of Faith, trodden less and less, was dwindling into a crooked and uncertain footway. It's an old, old story--why say more than that the miraculous basis of belief is a mere quicksand when Knowledge attempts to stand upon it? But Edward John was as much a man as his son would ever be, and Henry could see that his father was as important a unit in the Kingdom of Heaven as he could hope to become. Was Ignorance, then, the kindest friend? No, there must be a way for the cultured as for the unlettered; but was it a different way? Thus and so forth went the unrestful soul of the young man, who was even then writing his undecided mind into a novel, and by that token giving evidence of an ignorance as essential as his father's, different in kind but not in degree. CHAPTER XXII HOME AGAIN TWO days before Henry had planned to leave London for his holiday at home, Adrian Grant looked in upon him hurriedly at the _Watchman_ office to ask if it were possible for him to secure accommodation at Hampton. "You!" exclaimed Henry, in surprise, and something akin to a feeling of shame for the meagre possibilities of entertainment at his home flushed his face. "Why not?" said his friend, with a smile. "I know less than nothing of English rural life, and it came to me as an inspiration this morning that here was a chance to try the effect of country quiet at home. I have a bit of work to finish, and most of my writing has been done abroad in drowsy places. Strange I have never tried our own rural shades, though I produce but little either in London or at Laysford." "It's an idea, certainly," Henry observed, in a very uncertain tone. "I'm sorry my people--" "Of course, I would not dream of troubling your folk, but I suppose there's such a thing as a village inn even in your secluded corner of earth." "There's the 'Wings and Spur,' to be sure, but I am doubtful of its comfort."