Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. ‘Not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catechisms!’ he muttered. ‘Nor the devil himself, I suppose?’ He turned once more to glance sharply in the direction of the face he could so dimly—and of set purpose—discern; and without a word trotted off into the hall. Lawford followed with the candle. ‘’Pon my word, you haven’t had a mouthful of supper. Let me forage; just a quarter of an hour, eh?’ ‘Not me,’ said Mr Bethany; ‘if you won’t have me, home I go. I refuse to encourage this miserable grass-widowering. What _would_ they say? What would the busybodies say? Ghouls and graves and shocking mysteries—Selina! Sister Anne! Come on.’ He shuffled on his hat and caught firm hold of his knobbed umbrella. ‘Better not leave a candle,’ he said. Lawford blew out the candle. ‘What? What?’ called the old man suddenly. But no voice had spoken. A thin trickle of light from the lamp in the street stuck up through the fanlight as, with a smile that could be described neither as mischievous, saturnine, nor vindictive, and was yet faintly suggestive of all three, Lawford quietly opened the drawing-room door and put down the candlestick on the floor within. ‘What on earth, my good man, are you fumbling after now?’ came the almost fretful question from under the echoing porch. ‘Coming, coming,’ said Lawford, and slammed the door behind them. CHAPTER SIXTEEN The first faint streaks of dawn were silvering across the stars when Lawford again let himself into his deserted house. He stumbled down to the pantry and cut himself a crust of bread and cheese, and ate it, sitting on the table, watching the leafy eastern sky through the painted bars of the area window. He munched on, hungry and tired. His night walk had cooled head and heart. Having obstinately refused Mr Bethany’s invitation to sleep at the Vicarage, he had sat down on an old low wall, and watched until his light had shone out at his bedroom window. Then he had simply wandered on, past rustling glimmering gardens, under the great timbers of yellowing elms, hardly thinking, hardly aware of himself except as in a far-away vision of a sluggish insignificant creature struggling across the tossed-up crust of an old, incomprehensible world.