A week later Peter met Langton by appointment in the Rouen club, the two of them being booked to travel that evening via Amiens to Abbeville.  His tall friend was drinking a whisky-and-soda in the smoke-room and talking with a somewhat bored expression to no less a person than Jenks of the A.S.C.

Peter greeted them.  “Hullo!” he said to the latter.  “Fancy meeting you here again.  Don’t say you’re going to lecture as well?”

“The good God preserve us!” exclaimed Jenks blasphemously.  “But I am off in your train to Boulogne.  Been transferred to our show there, and between ourselves, I’m not sorry to go.  It’s a decent hole in some ways, Boulogne, and it’s time I got out of Rouen.  You’re a lucky man, padre, not to be led into temptation by every damned girl you meet.  I don’t know what they see in me,” he continued mournfully, “and, at this hour of the afternoon, I don’t know what I see in them.”

“Nor do I,” said Langton.  “Have a drink, Graham?  There’ll be no getting anything on the ruddy train.  We leave at six-thirty, and get in somewhere about four a.m. next morning, so far as I can make out.”

“You don’t sound over-cheerful,” said Graham.

“I’m not.  I’m fed up over this damned lecture stunt!  The thing’s condemned to failure from the start, and at any rate it’s no time for it.  Fritz means more by this push than the idiots about here allow.  He may not get through; but, on the other hand, he may.  If he does, it’s UP with us all.  And here we are to go lecturing on economics and industrial problems while the damned house is on fire!”

Peter took his drink and sat down.  “What’s your particular subject?” he asked.

“The Empire.  Colonies.  South Africa.  Canada.  And why?  Because I took a degree in History in Cambridge, and have done surveying on the C.P.R.  Lor’!  Finish that drink and have another.”

They went together to the station, and got a first to themselves, in which they were fortunate.  They spread their kit about the place, suborned an official to warn everyone else off, and then Peter and Langton strolled up and down the platform for half an hour, as the train was not now to start till seven.  Somebody told them there was a row on up the line, though it was not plain how that would affect them.  Jenks departed on business of his own.  A girl lived somewhere in the neighbourhood.

“How’re you getting on now, padre?” asked Langton.

“I’m not getting on,” said Peter.  “I’m doing my job as best I can, and I’m seeing all there is to see, but I’m more in a fog than ever.  I’ve got a hospital at Havre, and I distribute cigarettes and the news of the day.  That’s about all.  I get on all right with the men socially, and now and again I meet a keen Nonconformist who wants me to pray with him, or an Anglican who wants Holy Communion, but not many.  When I preach I rebuke vice, as the Apostle says, but I’m hanged if I really know why.”