“What do I mean?” the doctor answered, striving to cover his discomfiture with a feeble smile. “Well, no harm, at any rate, Clode. I hope I shall have to congratulate you. But if you are going to——” “On what?” interrupted the curate sternly. “On what are you going to congratulate me?” “Haven’t you heard the news?” Gregg said in surprise. “What news? Of the pit accident?” Clode answered, restraining with difficulty a terrible outburst of passion. “Why I should think there is not a fool within three counties has not heard it by this time!” He almost swore at the man, and was turning away, when something in the doctor’s “No, no!” struck him, excited as he was, as peculiar. “Then what is it?” he said, hanging on his heel, half curious and half in scorn. “You have not heard about the rector?” The curate glared. “About the rector?” he said in a mechanical way. A sudden stillness fell on his face and tone at mention of the name. “No, what of him?” he continued, after another pause. “You have not heard that he is resigning?” Gregg asked. The curate’s eyes flashed with returning anger. “No,” he said grimly. “Nor any one else out of Bedlam!” “But it is so! It is true, I tell you!” the doctor answered in the excitement of conviction. “I have just seen a man who had it from the archdeacon, who left the rectory not an hour ago. He is going to resign at once.” The curate did not again deny the truth of the story. But he seemed to Gregg, watching eagerly for some sign of appreciation, to take the news coolly, considering how important it was to him. He stood silent a moment, looking thoughtfully down the street, and then shrugged his shoulders. That was all. Gregg did not see the little pulse which began to beat so furiously and suddenly in his cheek, nor hear the buzzing which for a few seconds rendered him deaf to the shrill cries of the schoolboys playing among the pillars of the market hall. “Mr. Lindo has changed his mind since yesterday, then,” Clode said at last, speaking in his ordinary rather contemptuous tone. “Yes, I heard he was talking big then,” replied the doctor, delighted with his success. “Defying the earl, and all the rest of it. That was quite in his line. But I never heard that much came of his talking. However, you are bound to stick up for him, I suppose.”