station in the
dusk; but he was surprised to find only a rickety little cart drawn by a
donkey sent to meet him (the house being five miles distant in the
hills), and still more surprised when a huge figure of a man, hatless,
dressed in knickerbockers, and with a large, floating grey beard, strode
down the platform as he gave up his ticket to the station-master and
announced himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small,
foxy-faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarily
deprived him of speech.

"Mr. Spinrobin, of course? I am Mr. Skale--Mr. Philip Skale."

The voice can only be described as booming, it was so deep and vibrating;
but the smile of welcome, where it escaped with difficulty from the
network of beard and moustaches, was winning and almost gentle in
contradistinction to the volume of that authoritative voice. Spinrobin
felt slightly bewildered--caught up into a whirlwind that drove too many
impressions through his brain for any particular one to be seized and
mastered. He found himself shaking hands--Mr. Skale, rather, shaking his,
in a capacious grasp as though it were some small indiarubber ball to be
squeezed and flung away. Mr. Skale flung it away, he felt the shock up
the whole length of his arm to the shoulder. His first impressions, he
declares, he cannot remember--they were too tumultuous--beyond that he
liked both smile and voice, the former making him feel at home, the
latter filling him to the brim with a peculiar sense of well-being. Never
before had he heard his name pronounced in quite the same way; it sounded
dignified, even splendid, the way Mr. Skale spoke it. Beyond this general
impression, however, he can only say that his thoughts and feelings
"whirled." Something emanated from this giant clergyman that was somewhat
enveloping and took him off his feet. The keynote of the man had been
struck at once.

"How do you do, sir? This _is_ the train you mentioned, I think?"
Spinrobin heard his own thin voice speaking, by way, as it were, of
instinctive apology that he should have put such a man to the trouble of
coming to meet him. He said "sir," it seemed unavoidable; for there was
nothing of the clergyman about him--bishop, perhaps, or archbishop, but
no suggestion of vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too, in his
presentment he felt dimly, even at the first, there was an element of the
incongruous, a meeting of things not usually found together. The
vigorous open-