n every sentence. I was to carry his affectionate
regards to the family in America and say that he was in health.

It stood out plainly that I was not wanted.

This was strange in itself, but it was not the strangest thing about
this letter. The strangest thing was a word written in a shaky cramped
hand on the back of the sheet: the letters huddled together: "Come!"

I would have believed my uncle justified in his note. It was a long
journey. I had great difficulty to find anyone to take me out from the
railway station. There were idle men enough, but they shook their heads
when I named the house. Finally, for a double wage, I got an old gillie
with a cart to bring me as far on the way as the highroad ran. But he
would not turn into the unkept road that led over the moor to the house.
I could neither bribe nor persuade him. There was no alternative but to
set out through the mist with my bag on my shoulder.

Night was coming on. The moor was a vast wilderness of gorse. The house
loomed at the foot of it and beyond the loch that made a sort of estuary
for the open sea. Nor was this the only thing. I got the impression as I
tramped along that I was not alone on the moor. I don't know out of what
evidences the impression was built up. I felt that someone was in the
gorse beyond the road.

The house was closed up like a sleeping eye when I got before it. It was
a big, old, rambling stone house with a tangle of vines half torn away
by the winds: I hammered on the door and finally an aged man-servant
holding a candle high above his head let me in.

This was the manner of my coming to Saint Conan's Landing.

I had some supper of cold meat brought in by this aged servant. He was a
shrunken derelict of a human figure. He was disturbed at my arrival
and ill at ease. But I thought there was relief and welcome in his
expression. The master would be in directly; he would light a fire in
the drawing-room and prepare a bedchamber for me.

One would hardly find outside of England such faithful creatures
clinging to the fortunes of descending men. He was at the end of life
and in some fearful perplexity, but one felt there was something stanch
and sound in him.

I had no doubt that there, under my eye, was the hand that had added the
cramped word to my uncle's letter.

I stood now before the fire in the long, low room. The flames and a tall
candle at either end of the mantelpiece lit it up. I was looking at the
Buddha in the