ace
and innocence. But how came you to know the story?"

"I? Oh, I make it my business to know a little of everything, and as
much as possible of human life, not excepting the petty chronicles of
the rustics around me. It is my chief pleasure. I earn my living by
teaching boys. I find my satisfaction in studying men. But you are on
a journey, sir, and night is falling. I must not detain you. Or perhaps
you will allow me to forward you a little by serving as a guide. Which
way were you going when you turned aside to look at this dismantled
shrine?"

"To Canterbury," I answered, "to find a night's, or a month's, lodging
at the inn. My journey is a ramble, it has neither terminus nor
time-table."

"Then let me commend to you something vastly better than the tender
mercies of the Canterbury Inn. Come with me to the school on Hilltop,
where I am a teacher. It is a thousand feet above the village--purer
air, finer view, and pleasanter company. There is plenty of room in
the house, for it is vacation-time. Master Isaac Ward is always glad to
entertain guests."

There was something so sudden and unconventional about the invitation
that I was reluctant to accept it; but he gave it naturally and pressed
it with earnest courtesy, assuring me that it was in accordance with
Master Ward's custom, that he would be much disappointed to lose the
chance of talking with an interesting traveller, that he would far
rather let me pay him for my lodging than have me go by, and so on--so
that at last I consented.

Three minutes' walking from the deserted clearing brought us into a
travelled road. It circled the breast of the mountain, and as we stepped
along it in the dusk I learned something of my companion. His name was
Edward Keene; he taught Latin and Greek in the Hilltop School; he had
studied for the ministry, but had given it up, I gathered, on account of
a certain loss of interest, or rather a diversion of interest in another
direction. He spoke of himself with an impersonal candour.

"Preachers must be always trying to persuade men," he said. "But what I
care about is to know men. I don't care what they do. Certainly I have
no wish to interfere with them in their doings, for I doubt whether
anyone can really change them. Each tree bears its own fruit, you see,
and by their fruits you know them."

"What do you say to grafting? That changes the fruit, surely?"

"Yes, but a grafted tree is not really one tree. It is two trees g