‘Did O’Grady leave this paper here for me to read,’ he asked himself, ’or did he forget to take it away with him?  We talked of so many things that he may have forgotten it, forgotten even to mention it.  How very strange!’

The lodge gates and the long drive, winding between different woods, ascending gradually to the hilltop on which Beechwood Hall was placed by an early eighteenth-century architect, seemed to the priest to be described with too much unction by the representative of Illustrated England.  To the journalist Beechwood Hall stood on its hill, a sign and symbol of the spacious leisure of the eighteenth century and the long tradition that it represented, one that had not even begun to drop into decadence till 1850, a tradition that still existed, despite the fact that democracy was finding its way into the agricultural parts of England.  The journalist was impressed, perhaps unduly impressed, by the noble hall and the quiet passages that seemed to preserve a memory of the many generations that had passed through them on different errands, now all hushed in the family vault.

Father Oliver looked down the column rapidly, and it was not until the footman who admitted the journalist was dismissed by the butler, who himself conducted the journalist to the library, that Father Oliver said:  ’We have at last arrived at the castle of learning in which the great Mr. Poole sits sharpening the pen which is to slay Christianity.  But Christianity will escape Mr. Poole’s pen.  It, has outlived many such attacks in the past.  We shall see, however, what kind of nib he uses, fine or blunt?’ The journalist followed the butler down the long library overlooking green sward to a quiet nook, if he might venture to speak of Mr. Walter Poole’s study as a quiet nook.  It seemed to surprise him that Mr. Walter Poole should rise from his writing-table and come forward to meet him, and he expressed his gratitude to Mr. Walter Poole, whose time was of great importance, for receiving him.  And after all this unction came a flattering description of Mr. Walter Poole himself.

He was, in the interviewer’s words, a young man, tall and clean-shaven, with a high nose which goes well with an eye-glass.  The chin is long and drops straight; his hair is mustard-coloured and glossy, and it curls very prettily about the broad, well-shapen forehead.  He is reserved at first, and this lends a charm to the promise, which is very soon granted you, of making the acquaintance with the thoughts and ideas which have interested Mr. Walter Poole since boyhood—­in fine, which have given him his character.  If he seems at first sight to conceal himself from you, it is from shyness, or because he is reluctant to throw open his mind to the casual curious.  Why should he not keep his mind for his own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of his friends, treating it like his pleasure grounds or park?  His books are not written for the many but for the few, and he does not desire a larger audience than those with whom he is in natural communion from the first, and this without any faintest appearance of affectation.