t cows, and the hall smelt of damp cloaks.

'It's our evening to take the winter cantata,' Mr. Sperrit explained.
'It's "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire." I hoped you'd come back.
There are scores of little things to settle. As for the house, of
course, it stands ready for you at any time. I couldn't get Rhoda out of
it--nor could Charlie for that matter. She's the sister, isn't she, of
the nurse who brought you down here when you were four, she says, to
recover from measles?'

'Is she? Was I?' said Midmore through the bad tastes in his mouth.
'D'you suppose I could stay there the night?'

Thirty joyous young voices shouted appeal to some one to leave their
'pipes of parsley 'ollow--'ollow--'ollow!' Mr. Sperrit had to raise his
voice above the din.

'Well, if I asked you to stay _here_, I should never hear the last of it
from Rhoda. She's a little cracked, of course, but the soul of devotion
and capable of anything. _Ne sit ancillae_, you know.'

'Thank you. Then I'll go. I'll walk.' He stumbled out dazed and sick
into the winter twilight, and sought the square house by the brook.

It was not a dignified entry, because when the door was unchained and
Rhoda exclaimed, he took two valiant steps into the hall and then
fainted--as men sometimes will after twenty-two hours of strong emotion
and little food.

'I'm sorry,' he said when he could speak. He was lying at the foot of
the stairs, his head on Rhoda's lap.

'Your 'ome is your castle, sir,' was the reply in his hair. 'I smelt it
wasn't drink. You lay on the sofa till I get your supper.'

She settled him in a drawing-room hung with yellow silk, heavy with the
smell of dead leaves and oil lamp. Something murmured soothingly in the
background and overcame the noises in his head. He thought he heard
horses' feet on wet gravel and a voice singing about ships and flocks
and grass. It passed close to the shuttered bay-window.

But each will mourn his own, she saith,
And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
Than my son's wife, Elizabeth ...
Cusha--cusha--cusha--calling.

The hoofs broke into a canter as Rhoda entered with the tray. 'And then
I'll put you to bed,' she said. 'Sidney's coming in the morning.'
Midmore asked no questions. He dragged his poor bruised soul to bed and
would have pitied it all over again, but the food and warm sherry and
water drugged him to instant sleep.

Rhoda's voice wakened him, asking whether he would have ''i