a toad from the hiding-place of some private ooze at the bottom of each soul into one face after the other; and there was a certain youth who grew so visibly in guilt, who had so many beads of an obviously guilty perspiration on his forehead, and eyes so guiltily starting from their sockets, that only by a violent effort of self-control could the vicar stop himself from pointing at him and shouting out then and there "Thou art the man!" Meanwhile the real murderer had hired a waggonette and was taking his wife for a pleasant country drive. It was to pacify Fritzing that Priscilla came down to breakfast. Left to herself she would by preference never have breakfasted again. She even drank more milk to please him; but though it might please him, no amount of milk could wash out the utter blackness of her spirit. He, seeing her droop behind the jug, seeing her gazing drearily at nothing in particular, jumped up and took a book from the shelves and without more ado began to read aloud. "It is better, ma'am," he explained briefly, glancing at her over his spectacles, "than that you should give yourself over to gloom." Priscilla turned vague eyes on to him. "How can I help gloom?" she asked. "Yes, yes, that may be. But nobody should be gloomy at breakfast. The entire day is very apt, in consequence, to be curdled." "It will be curdled anyhow," said Priscilla, her head sinking on to her chest. "Ma'am, listen to this." And with a piece of bread and butter in one hand, from which he took occasional hurried bites, and the other raised in appropriate varying gesticulation, Fritzing read portions of the Persae of Æschylus to her, first in Greek for the joy of his own ear and then translating it into English for the edification of hers. He, at least, was off after the first line, sailing golden seas remote and glorious, places where words were lovely and deeds heroic, places most beautiful and brave, most admirably, most restfully unlike Creeper Cottage. He rolled out the sentences, turning them on his tongue, savouring them, reluctant to let them go. She sat looking at him, wondering how he could possibly even for an instant forget the actual and the present. "'Xerxes went forth, Xerxes perished, Xerxes mismanaged all things in the depths of the sea--'" declaimed Fritzing. "He must have been like us," murmured Priscilla. "'O for Darius the scatheless, the protector! No woman ever mourned for deed of his--'" "What a nice man," sighed Priscilla. "'O for Darius!'" "Ma'am, if you interrupt how can I read? And it is a most beautiful passage." "But we do want a Darius badly," moaned Priscilla.