This was a man remarkable for his extreme thinness, for the wild lock of black hair that fell over his forehead and almost into his eyes, and for a certain sort of threadbare and dissolute distinction which hung about him. Falk knew him slightly. His name was Edmund Davray, and he had lived in Polchester now for a considerable number of years. He was an artist, and had arrived in the town one summer on a walking tour through Glebeshire. He had attracted attention at once by the quality of his painting, by the volubility of his manner, and by his general air of being a person of considerable distinction. His surname was French, but no one knew anything with any certainty about him. Something attracted him in Polchester, and he stayed. He soon gave it out that it was the Cathedral that fascinated him; he painted a number of remarkable sketches of the nave, the choir, Saint Margaret's Chapel, the Black Bishop's Tomb. He had a "show" in London and was supposed to have done very well out of it. He disappeared for a little, but soon returned, and was to be found in the Cathedral most days of the week. At first he had a little studio at the top of Orange Street. At this time he was rather popular in Polchester society. Mrs. Combermere took him up and found him audacious and amusing. His French name gave a kind of piquancy to his audacity; he was unusual; he was striking. It was right for Polchester to have an artist and to stick him up in the very middle of the town as an emblem of taste and culture. Soon, however, he began to decline. It was whispered that he drank, that his morals were "only what you'd expect of an artist," and that he was really "too queer about the Cathedral." One day he told Miss Dobell that the amount that she knew about literature would go inside a very small pea, and he was certainly "the worse for liquor" at one of Mrs. Combermere's tea-parties. He did not, however, give them time to drop him; he dropped himself, gave up his Orange Street studio, lived, no one knew where, neglected his appearance, and drank quite freely whenever he could get anything to drink. He now cut everybody, rather than allowed himself to be cut. He was in the Cathedral as often as ever, and Lawrence and Cobbett, the Vergers, longed to have an excuse for expelling him, but he always behaved himself there and was in nobody's way. He was finally regarded as "quite mad," and was seen to talk aloud to himself as he walked about the streets. "An unhappy example," Miss Dobell said, "of the artistic temperament, that wonderful gift, gone wrong." Falk had seen him often before at the "Dog and Pilchard," and had wondered at first whether Annie Hogg was the attraction. It was soon clear, however, that there was nothing in that. He never looked at the girl nor, indeed, at any one else in the place. He simply sat there moodily staring in front of him and drinking.