Val had naturally no idea that any one was near him.  He had reached the gate and was preparing to vault it when out of the dense alder-shadow a hand seized his arm.  “So sorry if I startled you.”  But Val was not visibly startled.  “Mrs. Clowes sent me, down to let you in.”

“Did she?  Very good of her, and of you,” returned Val’s voice, pleasant and friendly.  “She always expects me to walk into the river.  But, after all, I shouldn’t be drowned if I did.  Is Clowes gone to bed?”

“He’s on his way there.  Did you want to see him?”

“I’ll look in for five minutes after Barry has tucked him up.  Have you been introduced to Barry yet?  He’s quite a character.”

“So I should imagine.  He came in to cart Bernard off, and did something clumsy, or Bernard said he did, and Bernard cuffed his head for him.  Barry didn’t seem to mind much.  Why does he stay?  Is it devotion?”

“He stays because your cousin pays him twice what he would get anywhere else.  No, I shouldn’t call Barry devoted.  But he does his work well, and it isn’t anybody’s job.”

“I believe you,” Lawrence muttered.

“Warm tonight, isn’t it?  No, thanks, I won’t have anything to drink—­ I’ve only just finished supper.  By the by, let me apologize for my absence this afternoon.  I was most awfully sorry to miss you, but I never got away from Countisford till after half past five, and my mare cast a shoe on the way back.  Then I tried to get her shod in Liddiard St. Agnes, which is one of those idyllic villages that people write books about, and there I found an Odd-fellows’ fete in full swing.  The village blacksmith was altogether too harmonious for business, so not being able to cuff his head, like your cousin, I was obliged to walk home.

“Really’?  Have a cigar if you won’t have anything else.”  Val accepted one, and in default of a match Lawrence made him light it from his own.  He was entirely at his ease, though the situation struck him as bizarre, but he did not believe that Val was at ease, no, not for all his natural manner and fertility in commonplace.  Lawrence was faintly sorry for the poor devil, but only faintly:  after all, an awkward interview once in ten years was a low price to pay for that night which Lawrence never had forgotten and never would forget.  He had an excellent memory, photographic and phonographic, a gift that wise men covet for themselves but deprecate in their friends.

Lawrence was no Pharisee, but he was not a Samaritan either.  He had deliberately set himself to pull up any stray weeds of moral scruple that lingered in a mind stripped bare of Christian ethic, a task harder than some realize, since thousands of men who have no faith in Christ practise virtues that were not known for virtues by the Western world before Christ came to it.  But every man is his own special pleader, and Lawrence, whose theory was that one man is as good as another, retained a good hearty