one fine
May morning. The room in which they sat was in keeping with the old
house and its surroundings--a long, low-ceilinged room, with oak
panelling around its walls, and oak beams across its roof--a room of
old furniture, and, old pictures, and old books, its antique atmosphere
relieved by great masses of flowers, set here and there in old china
bowls: through its wide windows, the casements of which were thrown wide
open, there was an inviting prospect of a high-edged flower garden, and,
seen in vistas through the trees and shrubberies, of patches of the west
front of the Cathedral, now sombre and grey in shadow. But on the garden
and into this flower-scented room the sun was shining gaily through the
trees, and making gleams of light on the silver and china on the table
and on the faces of the three people who sat around it.

Of these three, two were young, and the third was one of those men
whose age it is never easy to guess--a tall, clean-shaven, bright-eyed,
alert-looking man, good-looking in a clever, professional sort of way, a
man whom no one could have taken for anything but a member of one of the
learned callings. In some lights he looked no more than forty: a strong
light betrayed the fact that his dark hair had a streak of grey in
it, and was showing a tendency to whiten about the temples. A
strong, intellectually superior man, this, scrupulously groomed and
well-dressed, as befitted what he really was--a medical practitioner
with an excellent connection amongst the exclusive society of a
cathedral town. Around him hung an undeniable air of content and
prosperity--as he turned over a pile of letters which stood by his
plate, or glanced at the morning newspaper which lay at his elbow, it
was easy to see that he had no cares beyond those of the day, and that
they--so far as he knew then--were not likely to affect him greatly.
Seeing him in these pleasant domestic circumstances, at the head of
his table, with abundant evidences of comfort and refinement and modest
luxury about him, any one would have said, without hesitation, that Dr.
Mark Ransford was undeniably one of the fortunate folk of this world.

The second person of the three was a boy of apparently seventeen--a
well-built, handsome lad of the senior schoolboy type, who was devoting
himself in business-like fashion to two widely-differing pursuits--one,
the consumption of eggs and bacon and dry toast; the other, the study
of a Latin textbook, whi