on their doors--for fastenings in small
country places are not much thought about, people around being
proverbially honest. They also had their shutters altered. The shutters
to the windows, back and front, had holes in them in the form of a
heart, such as you may have sometimes noticed. Before the wild-looking
man--whose name came to be known as Pike--had been in possession of the
shed a fortnight, Jabez Gum had the holes in his shutters filled-in and
painted over. An additional security, said the neighbours: but poor timid
Mrs. Gum could not overcome that first fright, and the very mention of
the man set her trembling and quaking.

Nothing more was said of the dream or the apparition, real or fancied, of
Lord Hartledon: Clerk Gum did not encourage the familiar handling of such
topics in everyday life. He breakfasted, devoted an hour to his own
business in the little office, and then put on his coat to go out. It was
Friday morning. On that day and on Wednesdays the church was open for
baptisms, and it was the clerk's custom to go over at ten o'clock and
apprize the Rector of any notices he might have had.

Passing in at the iron gates, the large white house rose before him,
beyond the wide lawn. It had been built by Dr. Ashton at his own
expense. The old Rectory was a tumbledown, inconvenient place, always
in dilapidation, for as soon as one part of it was repaired another
fell through; and the Rector opened his heart and his purse, both
large and generous, and built a new one. Mr. Gum was making his way
unannounced to the Rector's study, according to custom, when a door on
the opposite side of the hall opened, and Dr. Ashton came out. He was a
pleasant-looking man, with dark hair and eyes, his countenance one of
keen intellect; and though only of middle height, there was something
stately, grand, imposing in his whole appearance.

"Is that you, Jabez?"

Connected with each other for so many years--a connection which had begun
when both were young--the Rector and Mrs. Ashton had never called him
anything but Jabez. With other people he was Gum, or Mr. Gum, or Clerk
Gum: Jabez with them. He, Jabez, was the older man of the two by six or
seven years, for the Rector was not more than forty-five. The clerk
crossed the hall, its tessellated flags gleaming under the colours
thrown in by the stained windows, and entered the drawing-room, a noble
apartment looking on to the lawn in front. Mrs. Ashton, a tall,
delicate-loo