uilding, breaking the
time-worn line. To their left, keeping watch over the graves which
encircled it, rose the fourteenth-century church; amid the trees around
it rooks were cawing and wheeling; and close beneath it huddled other
cottages, ivy-grown, about the village well. Afternoon school was just
over, and the children were skipping and running about the streets.
Through the cottage doors could be seen occasionally the gleam of a fire
or a white cloth spread for tea. For the womenfolk, at least, tea was
the great meal of the day in Beechcote. So that what with the flickering
of the fires, and the sunset light on the windows, the skipping
children, the dogs, the tea-tables, and the rooks, Beechcote wore a
cheerful and idyllic air. But Mrs. Roughsedge knew too much about these
cottages. In this one to the left a girl had just borne her second
illegitimate child; in that one farther on were two mentally deficient
children, the offspring of feeble-minded parents; in the next, an old
woman, the victim of pernicious anaemia, was moaning her life away; in
the last to the right the mother of five small children had just died in
her sixth confinement. Mrs. Roughsedge gave a long sigh as she looked at
it. The tragedy was but forty-eight hours old; she had sat up with the
mother through her dying hours.

"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, suddenly--"here comes the Vicar. Do
you know, it's so unlucky--and so strange!--but he has certainly taken a
dislike to Miss Mallory--I believe it was because he had hoped some
Christian Socialist friends of his would have taken Beechcote, and he
was disappointed to find it let to some one with what he calls 'silly
Tory notions' and no particular ideas about Church matters. Now there's
a regular fuss--something about the Book Club. I don't understand--"

The Vicar advanced toward them. He came along at a great pace, his lean
figure closely sheathed in his long clerical coat, his face a little
frowning and set.

At the sight of Mrs. Roughsedge he drew up, and greeted the mother and
son.

"May I have a few words with you?" he asked Mrs. Roughsedge, as he
turned back with them toward the Beechcote lane. "I don't know whether
you are acquainted, Mrs. Roughsedge, with what has just happened in the
Book Club, to which we both belong?"

The Book Club was a village institution of some antiquity. It embraced
some ten families, who drew up their Mudie lists in common and sent the
books from hou