Those simple folk, who looked death in the face as a necessary part of their daily life, knew a man when they saw one, and there was that in Charles Eager's face which would never be in Mr. Smythe's if he lived to be a hundred--that keen hunger for the hearts and souls and lives of men which makes one man a pastor, and the lack of which leaves another but a priest. And if the cottagers instinctively recognised the difference, how much more that bluff guardian--beyond their inclinations at times--of their outer husks, Dr. Yool! When Jane Tod, his housekeeper, ushered the stranger into his room Dr. Yool was mixing himself a stiff glass of grog and compounding new fulminations, objurgative and expletive, tending towards the cleansing of Wynsloe streets and backyards. Miss Tod was a woman in ten thousand, and had been specially created for the post of housekeeper to Dr. Yool. She was blessed with an imperturbable placidity which the irascible doctor had striven in vain to ruffle for over twenty years. When he came in of a night, tired and hungry and bursting with anger at the bovine stupidity of his patients, she let him rave to his heart's relief without changing a hair, and set food and drink before him, and agreed with all he said, even when he grew personal, and she never talked back. When she showed in Mr. Eager she simply opened the sitting-room door, said "New passon," and closed it behind him. "Will you let me introduce myself, Dr. Yool, seeing that the vicar is not here to do it? I am Charles Eager, vice Smythe, translated. You aid I are partners, you see, so I thought the sooner we became acquainted the better." "H'mph!" grunted Dr. Yool, eyeing his visitor keenly over the top of the glass as he sipped his red-hot grog. "Charles Eager, eh? And what are you eager for, Mr. Eager?" "Men, women, children--bodies and souls." "You leave their bodies to me," growled Dr. Yool in his brusquest manner. "Their souls '11 be quite as much as you can tackle." But Eager saw through his brusquerie. A very beautiful smile played over the keen, earnest face as he said: "When you separate them it's too late for either of us to do them any good." "Separate them! Takes me all my time to keep 'em together." "Exactly! So we'll make better headway if we work together and overlap." "Right! We'll work together, Mr. Eager." And the doctor's big brown hand met the other's in a friendly grip. "You've got more bone in you than the late invertebrate. He was a sickener. Hand like a fish. Have some grog? "I don't permit myself grog. It wouldn't do, you know. But I'll have a pipe. I see you don't object to smoke."