tanding by the counter, weighing a letter; and you, being in a
hurry, did not recognise me. But I asked the old postmistress your
name. Do you remember her?'

'She knew everybody's name,' said the colonel. 'And so that was
all?'

'That was all, except that my blessing has gone with you, sir, from
that day. Man and boy it has gone with you.'

'Ma'am, if I had guessed it, some weary days in India might have been
less weary.'

So they sat talking for a while; but, by degrees, the invalid's eyes
had grown pre-occupied.

'Netta, dear,' she asked at length, 'do you think we might ask the
colonel to honour us by sharing our Christmas dinner to-morrow?'

In that luckless moment Colonel Baigent glanced up, caught sight of
Miss Netta's face, and saw that in it which made his own colour to
the roots of his hair. Then he gave a gulp, and faced the situation
like the brave man he was.

'Ma'am,' he said gently, 'you have taken me for a friend, and God
knows, my friends are few enough. I am going to treat you as a very
old friend, and to dismiss all tact. You will eat your Christmas
dinner with me to-morrow, here, in this house.'

On his way back to the hotel Colonel Baigent halted to stare up at
the minster tower. So much of his life had been spent under the
shadow of it!--and yet, of all his sowing, one small act alone, long
forgotten, had taken root here and survived.

In his dreams next morning he heard the minster bell ringing for
early service. In his dreams, for a stroke or two, the remembered
note of it carried him back to boyhood. Then he awoke with a start,
and jumped out of bed.

Far up the hill the bugles from the barracks challenged the note of
the bell. Over the muslin blind drawn half-way across his window the
sun shone on a clear, frosty morning; and in the haze of it, as he
dressed, his eyes rested, across the clustered roofs, on an angle of
the minster tower, and beyond it on the hill with the quarry hewn in
its side, and the clump of trees remembered of all who in boyhood
have been sons of the city's famous school.

He dressed rapidly. The street below had not yet awakened to
Christmas Day, and the colonel, with Christmas in his heart, felt
eager as a messenger of good news.

An hour later, as he returned, all refreshed in soul, from the
minster, he ran against the second waiter, blinking in the sunlight
on the door-step of the hotel, and looking as though he had slept in
his evening sui