The days when the parish priest knew the secrets of every family within his cure have long gone by, never to return. His place in the last generation has been taken to a great extent by the family doctor, who in his turn perhaps will give way to the psycho-therapist in the generation to come. Mr. Trupp had not been long in Beachbourne before he began to know something of the inner histories of many of the families about him. Those shrewd eyes of his, peering short-sightedly through pince-nez as he rolled about the steep streets of Old Town, or drove in his hooded gig along the broad esplanades of New, allowed little to escape them. Moreover he was a man of singular discretion; and his fellow citizens, men alike and women, learned soon to trust him and never had cause to regret their confidence. It was quite in the early days of his residence in the little township on the hill that the young surgeon received a letter from Mr. Caspar, the famous railway contractor, asking him to look after--_my boy, Ned, who has seen good to pitch his tent on your accursed Downs--heaven knows why_. Hans Caspar owed his immense success in life as much to his habit of almost brutal directness as to anything, save perhaps his equally brutal energy. A Governor of the Whitechapel Hospital, and a regular attendant at the Board-meetings, he knew the young surgeon well, believed in him, and did not hesitate to tell the naked truth about his son. _He's not a scamp_, he wrote. _Nobody could say that of Ned. He's got no enemies but himself. You know his trouble. His address is 60, Rectory Walk. Look him up. He won't come to you--shy as a roe-deer. But once you're established connection he'll love you like a dog. I've told him I'm sending you_. In a postscript he added, _I'll foot the bill. I keep the boy mighty short. It's the one thing I can do to help him_. Mr. Trupp, in those days none too busy, went.... The Manor, a solid Queen Anne house, fronted on to the street opposite the black-timbered _Star_, where of old pilgrims who had landed from the continent at Pevensey would, after a visit to Holy Well in Coombe-in-the-Cliff under Beau-nez, pass their first night before taking the green-way that led along the top of the Downs to the _Lamb_ at Aldwoldston on the road to the shrine of good St. Richard-de-la-Wych at Chichester. Mr. Trupp, muffled to the chin--for even in those days he was cultivating the cold which he was to cherish to the end--climbed Church Street, little changed for centuries, passed the massive-towered St. Michael's on the Kneb, and turned to the left at Billing's Corner. Here at once were evidences of the change that had driven Squire Caryll to forsake the home of his fathers and retreat westward to the valley of the Ruther before the onrush of those he called the barbarians. "They've squeezed me out, the ----!" the old man said with tears in his eyes. "But, by God, I've made em pay!"