gh, now. Sometimes I forget the world's moved on a
peg."

"But what did they say?"

"Can't tell you, Dick. I belong to the family, you know, and maybe they
had some decency about talking over Old Crow when I was round. I don't
think there was anything they could say. He was a perfectly clean,
decent citizen. He kept on voting. He didn't meddle with them and they
didn't with him. The only eccentricity about him was that he lived alone
and that, the last ten years or so of his life, he tramped all round
that region, over the mountain, too, taking care of the sick, if there
were any. The last five years he went round preaching, and the very last
year of all he took old Billy Jones into his hut, an awful old rip, if
ever there was one, and tended him till his death--Billy's death, I
mean. And if you consider that as indicating queerness--except that
people don't do it--I don't. I should call any conventional disapproval
of it an indictment rather, an indictment of Christianity. If it's too
eccentric to fit into a so-called Christian civilization, that is."

Dick wasn't going to call it anything at the moment. He sat staring at
the table, evidently reflecting, digesting and bowed down by his own
gravity in a way that always amused Raven even when he loved the boy
most. He fancied, when Dick looked like that, he was brooding over his
nose.

"Take it easy, son," he advised him pleasantly. "You won't get anywhere
with Old Crow. Guess again."

"No," said Dick, oblivious of the flippancy of this, "we sha'n't get
anywhere. We haven't enough data."

"Now," said Raven, coming up from his lounging posture, "I've got to
hustle. You run along and we'll go out somewhere to-night: dine, if you
want to, and drop in at a show. But, for heaven's sake, don't go to
digging up graveyards and expecting me to reconstruct your ancestors
from as few bones as we've got of Old Crow's. You bore me sometimes,
horribly, Dick. And that's the truth."

Dick did go away, though with an inarticulate remonstrance on his
tongue. But Raven was good-natured and yet decided, and even went to the
door with him, propelling him by a firm yet affectionate hand on his
shoulder.

They did dine out that night in a manner mildly bohemian, really
determined upon by Raven to show Dick he wasn't incapable yet of the
accepted forms of diversion, afflictingly dull though they might prove.

VII

In less than a week Raven, hurried beyond any design of his