_"Could you come down stay with me Saturday till Monday all alone air delicious feel rather solitary glad of your company Marcus Harding Minors Tankerton Kent."_ Such was the telegram which Evelyn Malling was considering on the following Friday afternoon. The sender had paid an answer. The telegraph-boy was waiting in the hall. Malling only kept him five minutes. He went away with this reply: _"Accept with pleasure will take four twenty train at Victoria Saturday Malling."_ Malling could not have said with truth that he had expected a summons from Mr. Harding, yet he found that he was not surprised to get it. The man was in a bad way. He needed sympathy, he needed help. That was certain. But whether he could help him was more than doubtful, Malling thought. Perhaps, really, a doctor and the wonderful air from the mud flats of Tankerton! But here Malling found that a strong incredulity checked him. He did not believe that the rector would be restored by a doctor's advice and a visit to the sea. That afternoon he went to Westminster, and asked for Professor Stepton. "He is away, sir," said the fair Scotch parlormaid. "For long?" "We don't know, sir. He has gone into Kent, on research business, I believe." Agnes had been for a long time in the professor's service, and was greatly trusted. The professor had come upon her originally when making investigations into "second sight," a faculty which she claimed to possess. By the way she was also an efficient parlor-maid. "Kent!" said Malling. "Do you know where he is staying?" "The address he left is the Tankerton Hotel, Tankerton, near Whitstable-on-Sea, sir." "Thank you, Agnes," said Malling. "It is a haunted house somewhere Birchington way the professor is after, I believe, sir." "Luck favors me!" said Malling to himself, unscientifically, as he walked away from the house. On the following day it was in a singularly expectant and almost joyously alert frame of mind that he bought a first-class ticket for Whitstable-on-Sea, which is the station for Tankerton. He would involve Stepton in this affair. There was a mystery in it. Malling was now convinced of that. And his original supposition did not satisfy him. But perhaps Mr. Harding meant to help him. Perhaps Mr. Harding intended to be explicit. The difficulty there was that he also was walking in darkness, as Malling believed. His telegram had come like a cry out of this darkness. "Faversham! Faversham!" the fair Kentish porters were calling. Only about twenty minutes now! Would the rector be at the station? He was. As the train ran in alongside the wooden platform, Mailing caught sight of the towering authoritative figure. Was it his fancy which made him think that it looked slightly bowed, even perhaps a little shrunken? "Good of you to come!" said the rector in a would-be hearty voice, but also with a genuine accent of pleasure. "All the afternoon I have been afraid of a telegram." "Why?" asked Malling, as they shook hands.