lay
portion of the world, that, like a God in courage and in calm, you may
indeed enter where Angel and Devil alike fear to tread. At least, that
is the old and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and
although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to
extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy
moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and,
guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on
the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish,
fair, middle-aged man, wearing a black skull-cap and clad in a faded
and greasy but rather handsome theatrical-looking dressing-gown and
seated in a worn arm-chair. As for the room itself, he suppressed an
exclamation of mingled surprise and impatient remonstrance, for,
although of large proportions and not badly lighted, it was so littered
with books, papers, maps, and pamphlets, so overgrown with piles of
dusty blue-books, reports, dictionaries and works of reference, thick
and antiquated, thin and modern, local and foreign, standing on end, on
tables, on the mantel-shelf, extending into the old-fashioned cupboards
minus doors, taking up a ragged sofa, a couple of arm-chairs, and a
dilapidated _armoire_, and even the greater portion of a bed, that
almost every gleam of sunlight was obscured, and upon this warm damp
August afternoon the air was heavy and close with a suggestion of
staler odours still.

"I saw you yesterday," said the man in the chair, "from this window,
but you did not see me, eh? You were greatly interested in the bird."

He paused, and a weak smile changed to a haughty air, accompanied by a
flourish of the hand.

"It is without doubt rare, a great curiosity. But there have been
white peacocks at Clairville a long time, many years, many years."

"Clairville! That is your name, the name of the young lady, the name
of this place?"

"Of this house. Also the estate. This house is, or should be, the
Manoir of the Clairvilles, of the _De_ Clairvilles. You are some kind
of clergyman?"

"I am. I am a Methodist."

"Have you read much?"

Ringfield, looking around somewhat whimsically at so many books, on a
pile of which he was obliged to sit, felt unusual ignorance. He was
probably in the presence of some famous scholar.

"Not much. Not anything like what you must have read if you have even
gone through a quarter of all these!"

"Ah!