ke their chance.'

After a stare and a frown, Harvey woke the echoes with boisterous
laughter. It was long since any passage in writing had so irresistibly
tickled his sense of humour. Well, he must let Abbott know of this. It
might be as well, perhaps, if he called on Mrs. Abbott tomorrow, to
remove any doubt that might remain in her mind. The fellow Wager being
an old acquaintance of his, he could not get rid of a sense of far-off
responsibility in this matter; though, happily, Wager's meeting with
Mrs. Abbott's cousin, which led to marriage and misery, came about quite
independently of him.

The last letter he opened without curiosity, but with quiet interest
and pleasure. It was dated from Greystone; the writer, Basil Morton,
had a place in his earliest memories, for, as neighbours' children,
they had played together long before the grammar-school days which
allied him with Hugh Carnaby.

'For aught I know,' began Morton, 'you may at this moment be drifting
on the Euphrates, or pondering on the site of Alexandreia Eschate. It
is you who owe me an account of yourself; nevertheless, I am prompted
to write, if only to tell you that I have just got the complete set of
the Byzantine Historians. A catalogue tempted me, and I did buy.'

And so on in the same strain, until, in speaking of nearer matters, his
style grew simpler.

'Our elder boy begins to put me in a difficulty. As I told you, he has
been brought up on the most orthodox lines of Anglicanism; his
mother--best of mothers and best of wives, but in this respect
atavistic--has had a free hand, and I don't see how it could have been
otherwise. But now the lad begins to ask awkward questions, and to put
me in a corner; the young rascal is a vigorous dialectician and
rationalist--odd result of such training. It becomes a serious question
how I am to behave. I cannot bear to distress his mother, yet how can I
tell him that I literally believe those quaint old fables? _Solvetur
vivendo_, of course, like everything else, but just now it worries me a
little. Generally I can see a pretty clear line of duty; here the duty
is divided, with a vengeance. Have you any counsel?'

Harvey Rolfe mumbled impatiently; all domestic matters were a trial to
his nerves. It seemed to him an act of unaccountable folly to marry a
woman from whom one differed diametrically on subjects that lay at the
root of life; and of children he could hardly bring himself to think at
all, so exas