Yet the encounter had left them friends; and the two men had been associated not long afterward in a heroic attempt to stop some dangerous rioting arising out of a strike in one of the larger collieries. Meynell watched the young figure of Fenton approaching through the bands of light and shadow in the great nave. As it came nearer, some instinct made him stand still, as though he became the mere spectator of what was about to happen. Fenton lifted his head; his eyes met Meynell's, and, without the smallest recognition, his gaze fixed on the pavement, he passed on toward the east end of the Cathedral. Meynell straightened himself for a minute's "recollection," and went his way. On the pavement outside the western portal he ran into another acquaintance--a Canon of the Cathedral--hurrying home to lunch from a morning's work in the Cathedral library. Canon France looked up, saw who it was, and Meynell, every nerve strained to its keenest, perceived the instant change of expression. But there was no ignoring him, though the Canon did not offer to shake hands. "Ah! Meynell, is that you? A fine day at last!" "Yes, we may save the harvest yet!" said Meynell, pausing in his walk. A kind of nervous curiosity bade him try and detain the Canon. But France--a man of sixty-five, with a large Buddha-like face, and a pair of remarkably shrewd and humorous black eyes--looked him quickly over from top to toe, and hurried on, throwing a "good-bye" over his shoulder. When he and Meynell had last met it had been to talk for a friendly hour over Monseigneur Duchesne's last book and its bearing on Ultramontane pretensions; and they had parted with a cordial grip of the hand, promising soon to meet again. "Yet he knew me for a heretic then!" thought Meynell. "I never made any secret of my opinions." All the same, as he walked on, he forced himself to acknowledge to the full the radical change in the situation. Acts of war suspend the normal order; and no combatant has any right to complain.