For years, this had been Medley's home. Each night, with his Horace and his pipe, he spent the happy, sober hours between dinner and bedtime here. His sermons were written on the old oak table. Over the high carved marble of the mantel the engraving of Our Lord knocking at the weed-grown door of a human heart, had looked down upon all his familiar, quiet evenings. In summer the long windows were open and the moonlight washed the lawns with silver, and the shadows of the trees seemed like pieces of black velvet nailed to the grass. In winter the piled logs glowed upon the hearth and the bitter winds from the Marshes, sang like a flight of arrows round the house. What was this that had come into the library, what new disturbing, insistent element? The Rector brought no such atmosphere into the house when he arrived. He would sip his coffee and smoke his pipe and linger for a gracious moment with the Singer of Mantua, or dispute about the true birthplace of him who sent Odysseus sailing over wine-coloured and enchanted seas. An insistent voice seemed to be calling to the clergyman--"Awake from your slumber--your long slumber! Hear the words of Truth!" He said nothing. His whole face showed reluctance, bewilderment, misease. The far keener intelligence of the other noted it at once. The mind of the Medico-Psychologist appreciated the episode at its exact value. He had troubled a still pool, and to no good purpose. Words of his--even if they carried an uneasy conviction--would never rouse this man to action. Let it be so! Why waste time? The clergyman was a delightful survival, a "rare Bird" still! "Well, that is my theory, at any rate, since you asked for it," Morton Sims said, the urgency and excitement quite gone from his voice. "And now, some more of the village, please!" Mr. Medley smiled cheerfully. He became suddenly conscious of the light and comfortable morning again. He felt his feet upon the carpet, he was in a place that he knew. "We'll go through the wicket-gate in the south wall," he said, with alacrity. "It's our nearest way, and there is a good view of the Manor House to be got from there. It's a fine old place, empty for most of the year, but always full for the shooting. Sir Ambrose McKee has it." "The whiskey man?" "Yes. The great distiller," Medley answered nervously--most anxious to sheer off from any further controversial subjects. They went out into the village. The old red-brick manor house was surveyed from a distance, and Morton Sims remarked absently upon its picturesqueness. His mind was occupied with other and far alien thoughts. Then they went down the white dusty road--the bordering hedges were all pilm-powdered for there had been no rain for many days--to the centre of the village.