outh and chin. He was uneasy, too, about
the imminent arrival of his sister Anne, who always frightened him and
made him think poorly of the world in general. No hope of getting any
money out of her, nor would Charles have left him a penny. It was a
rotten, unsympathetic world, and Uncle Mathew cursed God as he strutted
sulkily along. Maggie also had fallen into silence.

They came at last out of the wood and stood at the edge of it, with the
pine trees behind them, looking down over Polchester. On this winter's
afternoon Polchester with the thin covering of snow upon its roofs
sparkled like a city under glass. The Cathedral was dim in the mist of
the early dusk and the sun, setting behind the hill, with its last rays
caught the windows so that they blazed through the haze like smoking
fires. Whilst Maggie and her uncle stood there the bells began to ring
for Evensong, and the sound like a faint echo seemed to come from
behind them out of the wood. In the spring all the Polchester orchards
would be white and pink with blossom, in the summer the river that
encircled the city wall would run like a blue scarf between its green
sloping hills--now there was frost and snow and mist with the fires
smouldering at its heart. She gazed at it now as she had never gazed at
it before. She was going into it now. Her life was beginning at last.
When the sun had left the windows and the walls were grey she turned
back into the wood and led the way silently towards home.

The house that night was very strange with her father dead in it. She
sat, because she thought it her duty, in his bedroom. He lay on his
bed, with his beard carefully combed and brushed now, spread out upon
the sheet. His closed eyes and mouth gave him a grave and reverend
appearance which he had never worn in his life. He lay there, under the
flickering candle-light, like some saint who at length, after a life of
severe discipline, had entered into the joy of his Lord. Beneath the
bed was the big black box.

Maggie did not look at her father. She sat there, near the dark window,
her hands folded on her lap. She thought of nothing at all except the
rats. She was not afraid of them but they worried her. They had been a
trouble in the house for a long time past, poison had been laid for
them and they had refused to take it. They had had, perhaps, some fear
of the Reverend Charles, at any rate they scampered and scurried now
behind the wainscoting as though conscious o