With head perched in the air, and face half hidden in his great white collar, the wizened Elder, stopping Luke Claridge in the street one day, said: “Does thee think the lad will ride in Pharaoh’s chariot here?” There were sly lines of humour about the mouth of the wizened Elder as he spoke, but Luke Claridge did not see. “Pride is far from his heart,” he answered portentously. “He will ride in no chariot. He has written that he will walk here from Heddington, and none is to meet him.” “He will come by the cross-roads, perhaps,” rejoined the other piously. “Well, well, memory is a flower or a rod, as John Fox said, and the cross-roads have memories for him.” Again flashes of humour crossed his face, for he had a wide humanity, of insufficient exercise. “He has made full atonement, and thee does ill to recall the past, Reuben,” rejoined the other sternly. “If he has done no more that needs atonement than he did that day at the cross-roads, then has his history been worthy of Hamley,” rejoined the wizened Elder, eyes shut and head buried in his collar. “Hamley made him--Hamley made him. We did not spare advice, or example, or any correction that came to our minds--indeed, it was almost a luxury. Think you, does he still play the flute--an instrument none too grave, Luke?” But, to this, Luke Claridge exclaimed impatiently and hastened on; and the little wizened Elder chuckled to himself all the way to the house of John Fairley. None in Hamley took such pride in David as did these two old men, who had loved him from a child, but had discreetly hidden their favour, save to each other. Many times they had met and prayed together in the weeks when his life was in notorious danger in the Soudan. As David walked through the streets of Heddington making for the open country, he was conscious of a new feeling regarding the place. It was familiar, but in a new sense. Its grimy, narrow streets, unlovely houses, with shut windows, summer though it was, and no softening influences anywhere, save here and there a box of sickly geraniums in the windows, all struck his mind in a way they had never done before. A mile away were the green fields, the woods, the roadsides gay with flowers and shrubs-loveliness was but over the wall, as it were; yet here the barrack-like houses, the grey, harsh streets, seemed like prison walls, and the people in them prisoners who, with every legal right to call themselves free, were as much captives as the criminal on some small island in a dangerous sea. Escape--where? Into the gulf of no work and degradation? They never lifted their eyes above the day’s labour. They were scarce conscious of anything beyond. What were their pleasures? They had imitations of pleasures. To them a funeral or a wedding, a riot or a vociferous band, a dog-fight or a strike, were alike in this, that they quickened feelings which carried them out of themselves, gave them a sense of intoxication.