nies?"

"No; they won't do at all. But whom do you think I picked up on the way
home? You will never guess. Your pet parson, Mr. Austyn."

"Mr. Austyn!"

"Yes; I found him by the roadside not far from Monk's cottage, where he
had been visiting, looking sadly at a spring-cart, which the owner
thereof, one of the Rood Warren farmers, had managed to upset and damage
considerably. He was giving Austyn a lift home when the spill took
place. So, remembering your hankering and Lindy's for the society of
this young Ritualist, I persuaded him that instead of tramping six miles
through the wet he should come here and put up for the night with us;
so, leaving the farmer free to get home on his pony, I clinched the
matter by promising to send him back to-morrow in time for his eight
o'clock service."

"Oh dear! I wish I had known he was coming. I would have ordered a
dinner he would like."

"Judging by his appearance, I should say the dinner he would like will
be easily provided."

Atherley was right. Mr. Austyn's dinner consisted of soup, bread, and
water. He would not even touch the fish or the eggs elaborately prepared
for his especial benefit. Yet he was far from being a skeleton at the
feast, to whose immaterial side he contributed a good deal--not taking
the lead in conversation, but readily following whosoever did, giving
his opinions on one topic after another in the manner of a man well
informed, cultured, thoughtful, original even, and at the same time with
no warmer interest in all he spoke of than the inhabitant of another
planet might have shown.

Atherley was impressed and even surprised to a degree unflattering to
the rural clergy.

"This is indeed a _rara avis_ of a country curate," he confided to me
after dinner, while Lady Atherley was unravelling with Austyn his
connection with various families of her acquaintance. "We shall hear of
him in time to come, if, in the meanwhile, he does not starve himself to
death. By the way, I lay you odds he sees the ghost. To begin with; he
has heard of it--everybody has in this neighbourhood; and then St.
Anthony himself was never in a more favourable condition for spiritual
visitations. Look at him; he is blue with asceticism. But he won't turn
tail to the ghost; he'll hold his own. There's metal in him."

This led me to ask Austyn, as we went down the bachelor's passage to our
rooms, if he were afraid of ghosts.

"No; that is, I don't feel any fear now. Whether I