young men went up to London together, and great was the pleasure
they had in each other's society, after so long a separation in which
their hearts had remained unchanged while their natures had grown both
worthy and capable of more honour and affection. They had both much to
tell; for Robert was naturally open save in regard to his grief; and
Shargar was proud of being able to communicate with Robert from a nearer
level, in virtue of now knowing many things that Robert could not know.
They went together to a hotel in St. Paul's Churchyard.

CHAPTER III. A MERE GLIMPSE.

At the close of a fortnight, Falconer thought it time to return to
his duties in Aberdeen. The day before the steamer sailed, they found
themselves, about six o'clock, in Gracechurch Street. It was a fine
summer evening. The street was less crowded than earlier in the
afternoon, although there was a continuous stream of waggons, omnibuses,
and cabs both ways. As they stood on the curbstone, a little way north
of Lombard Street, waiting to cross--

'You see, Shargar,' said Robert, 'Nature will have her way. Not all the
hurry and confusion and roar can keep the shadows out. Look: wherever
a space is for a moment vacant, there falls a shadow, as grotesque, as
strange, as full of unutterable things as any shadow on a field of grass
and daisies.'

'I remember feeling the same kind of thing in India,' returned Shargar,
'where nothing looked as if it belonged to the world I was born in, but
my own shadow. In such a street as this, however, all the shadows look
as if they belonged to another world, and had no business here.'

'I quite feel that,' returned Falconer. 'They come like angels from the
lovely west and the pure air, to show that London cannot hurt them, for
it too is within the Kingdom of God--to teach the lovers of nature, like
the old orthodox Jew, St. Peter, that they must not call anything common
or unclean.'

Shargar made no reply, and Robert glanced round at him. He was staring
with wide eyes into, not at the crowd of vehicles that filled the
street. His face was pale, and strangely like the Shargar of old days.

'What's the matter with you?' Robert asked in some bewilderment.

Receiving no answer, he followed Shargar's gaze, and saw a strange sight
for London city.

In the middle of the crowd of vehicles, with an omnibus before them, and
a brewer's dray behind them, came a line of three donkey-carts, heaped
high with bundles an