lamby, as her powers of observation grew keener, he presented a study at once fascinating and mournful. He had deeper scholarship than many a man who holds a university chair; he knew the classics as lesser men know their party politics; and the woodlands, fields and brooks, with their countless inhabitants, held no mysteries for him. Yet he was content to be as Flamby had always known him—a manual labourer. The larder of Dovelands Cottage was well stocked, winter and summer alike, and Mrs. Duveen, who accepted what the gods offered unquestioningly, never troubled to inquire how folks so poor as they could procure game and fish at all proper seasons. Fawkes could have enlightened her; but there was no man in Lower Charleswood, or for that matter in the county, of a hardihood to cross Michael Duveen. Furthermore, Sir Jacques, who was a Justice of the Peace, would hear no ill of him. Finally, one bitter winter's morning in the first year of the war, Flamby learned why.

Sir Jacques, for the first time since the Duveens had resided there, crossed the threshold of Dovelands Cottage, bringing a letter which he had received from Duveen, then newly arrived in Flanders. That50 memorable visit was the first of many; and the diabolical patience with which Sir Jacques for over two years had awaited his opportunity was further exemplified in his conduct of the affair now that he was truly entered upon it.

At his first word of greeting, Flamby read his secret and her soul rose up in arms; by the time that he took his departure she doubted her woman's intuition—and wondered. Such was the magic of the silver voice, the Christian humility expressed in the bearing of that black figure. And when he had come again, and yet again, the first, true image began to fade more and more, and she listened with less and less misgiving to the words of encouragement which he best