troll through the
stables? Afterwards you shall have a book or two to carry off."

"But look here, Kendall; I came to you as a friend, you know. It seems
to me all plain sailing enough. But you seem to imply--"

"Do I? Then I am doubtless an ass."

"You think this Major Bromham should have written to me direct--I see
that you do. Well, he lives no farther away than Plymouth. I might run
up and call on him. Why, to be sure"--Parson Jack's brow cleared--"and
he can give me the address of the wife and children."

IV.

Parson Jack walked home with a volume of Gilbert's _Survey_ and another
of the _Parochial History of Cornwall_ under his arm, and Parker's
_Glossary_ in his skirt pocket. He began that evening with the
_Parochial History_, article "Langona," and smoked his pipe over it till
midnight in a sort of rapture it would be hard to analyse. In fact, no
doubt it was made up of that childish delight which most men feel on
reading in print what they know perfectly well already. "The eastern
end of the north aisle is used as a vestry, and the eastern end of the
south aisle is impropriated to the church-warden's use." Yes, that was
right. And the inscription on the one marble tablet was correctly
given, and the legend over the south porch: "_Ego sum Janua, per me qui
intrabit Servabitur_" But the delight of recognition was mixed with
that of discovery. The lower part of the tower was Early English, the
upper Perpendicular (a pause here, and a reference to Parker); the nave,
too, Perpendicular. Ah, then, it could only have been the upper part--
the belfry--which fell in and destroyed the nave. What was the date?--
1412. And they both had been rebuilt together--on the call of Edmund
Stafford, Bishop of Exeter--in the August of that year. He read on, the
familiar at each step opening new bypaths into the unguessed. But the
delight of delights was to hug, while he read, his purpose to change all
this story of ruin, to give it a new and happier chapter, to stand out
eminent among the forgotten Vicars of Langona. . . .

The book slid from his knee to the floor with a crash. He picked it up
carefully, turned down the lamp, laughed to himself, and went off to
bed, shivering but happy.

He awoke to fresh day-dreams. Day-dreams filled the next week with
visions of the church in all its destined beauty. To be sure, they were
extravagant enough, fantasies in which flying buttresses and flamboyant
tr