He turned away, obviously expecting no answer, addressed himself henceforward to Sir Harry, and ignored Parson Jack, who followed him abashed, yet secretly burning to hear more, and wondering where all this knowledge could be obtained.

“But it is inconceivable!” Clement Vyell protested to his uncle, half an hour later, as they rode back towards Carwithiel.  “The man has had the cure of that parish for—­how long, do you say?—­twenty-five years, and has never had the curiosity to discover the most rudimentary facts in its history.”

“A hard case,” assented Sir Harry.  “He lifts his elbow, too.”

“Eh?”

“Drinks.”  Sir Harry illustrated the idiom, lifting an imaginary glass to his mouth.  “Oh, it’s notorious.  But what the deuce can we do?  Kick him out?—­not so easy; and, besides, he’d die under a hedge.  You’re hard on him, Clem.  He has his notions of duty.  Why”—­the Baronet laughed—­“I’ve seen him on the roof with a tar-bucket, caulking the leaks for dear life.  He’s a gentleman, too.”

Clement Vyell tightened his lips and rode on in silence.

Left alone, Parson Jack stared around his church.  His repairs, in which he had taken pride before now, seemed nakedly, hideously mean at this moment.  But a new sense fought with his dejection—­a sense altogether new to him—­that his church had a history, a meaning into which he had never penetrated.  The aisles seemed to expand, the chancel to reach up into a distance in which space and time were confused; and, following it, his eye rested on a patch of colour in the east window between the wooden tablets of the Law—­a cluster of fragments of stained glass, rescued by some former vicar and set amid the clear panes—­the legs and scarlet robe of a saint, an angel’s wing, a broken legend on a scroll, part of a coat-of-arms, azure with a fesse,—­wavy of gold—­all thrown together as by a kaleidoscope gone mad.  Each of these scraps had once a meaning:  so this church held meanings, too long ignored by him, partly intelligible yet, soon to be mixed inextricably in a common downfall.  For Clement Vyell might be wise in the history of architecture, but his eye had not read the one plain warning which stared a common workman in the face—­that the days of this building were surely numbered, and were probably few.

Parson Jack had a mind to run after him.  He must learn, and speedily, all about the church, its builders, this old colony of monks.  But where?  In books doubtless.  Where could those books be found?

He had almost reached the door, when his eye fell on the two collecting-boxes.  With a sudden thought he paused, drew a key from the pocket of his corduroys, and unlocked his own—­the Parson’s box.  A sovereign lay within.

He picked up the coin and considered it, a dark flush growing on his face.  Parson Jack had a temper, though few guessed it.  With an effort he controlled it now, dropped the sovereign into the box labelled “Church Repairs,” and walked slowly out.