The good old Christian opened wide his great gray eyes with a blank
expression. He glanced vacantly about the simple room, rose to his feet,
and sat down again.

"I never thought of that before," he said, faintly, and staring long
into the fire.

There was a heavy foot on the path outside. The latch was lifted, and
Paul Ritson stepped into the room. At the sound of his step Greta
tripped through the inner door, all joy and eagerness, to welcome him.
The parson got up and held out both hands, the clouds gone from his
beaming face.

"Well, good-night," said the lawyer, opening the door. "I've four long
miles before me. And how dark! how very dark!"

Paul Ritson was in truth a changed man.

His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes were bleared and heavy. He
dropped with a listless weariness into the chair that Greta drew up to
the fire. When he smiled the lips lagged back to a gloomy repose, and
when he laughed the note of merriment rang hollow and fell short.

"Just in time for a game with me, my lad!" said the parson. "Greta,
fetch the chessboard and box."

The board was brought, the pieces fixed; the parson settled himself at
his ease, with slippers on the hearth-rug and a handkerchief across his
knee.

"Do you know, Paul, I heard a great parl about you to-day?"

"About me! Where?" asked Paul, without much curiosity in his tone.

"At Mr. Proudfoot's smithy, while I was turning the fallows in the
meadow down at the crossroads. Little Mr. Oglethorpe was saying that you
slept at the Pack Horse, in Keswick, the night before last; but Mr. Job
Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, said nay, and they had high words
indeed, wherein Job called Mr. Oglethorpe all but his proper name, and
flung away in high dudgeon."

Paul moved his pawn and said, "I never slept at the Pack Horse in my
life, Mr. Christian."

Greta sat knitting at one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell
attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty
slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and
the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke the silence.

At last Parson Christian drew himself up in his chair.

"Well, Paul, man, Paul--deary me, what a sad move! You're going back,
back, back; once you could beat me five games to four. Now I can run
away with you."

The game soon finished, amid a chuckle from the parson, a bantering word
from Greta, and a loud, forced laugh from Paul.