They sat down at the paper-littered table. For another hour and a half they stayed there, and it would have been curious for an observer to see how, in this business, Ronder obtained an absolute mastery. Foster, the fire dead in his eyes, the light gone, followed him blindly, agreeing to everything, wondering at the clearness, order and discipline of his plans. An hour ago, treading the soil of his own country, he had feared no man, and his feeling for Ronder had been one half-contempt, half-suspicion. Now he was in the other's hands. This was a world into which he had never won right of entry. The Cathedral chimes struck nine. Ronder got up and put his papers away with a little sigh of satisfaction. He knew that his work had been good. "There's nothing that we've forgotten. Bentinck-Major will be caught before he knows where he is. Ryle too. Let us get through this next week safely and the battle's won." Foster blinked. "Yes, yes," he said hurriedly. "Yes, yes. Good-night, good-night," and almost pushed Ronder from the room. "I don't believe he's taken in a word of it," Ronder thought, as he went down the creaking stairs. At the top of Badger's Street he paused. The street was still; the sky was pale green on the horizon, purple overhead. The light was still strong, but, to the left beyond the sloping fields, the woods were banked black and sombre. From the meadow in front of the woods came the sounds of an encampment--women shouting, horses neighing, dogs barking. A few lights gleamed like red eyes. The dusky forms of caravans with their thick-set chimneys, ebony-coloured against the green sky, crouched like animals barking. A woman was singing, men's voices took her up, and the song came rippling across the little valley. All the stir of an invading world was there. Chapter II Friday, June 18: Shadow Meets Shadow On that Friday evening, about half-past six o'clock, Archdeacon Brandon, just as he reached the top of the High Street, saw God. There was nothing either strange or unusual about this. Having had all his life the conviction that he and God were on the most intimate of terms, that God knew and understood himself and his wants better than any other friend that he had, that just as God had definitely deputed him to work out certain plans on this earth, so, at times, He needed his own help and advice, having never wavered for an instant in the very simplest tenets of his creed, and believing in every word of the New Testament as though the events there recorded had only a week ago happened in his own town under his own eyes--all this being so, it was not strange that he should sometimes come into close and actual contact with his Master.