“He has met Nicky in Canada.”

“I thought Archelaus had gone West in the States, if he were still alive at all.  I was beginning to think something must have happened to him.  No one has heard for so long.  He took a funny idea into his head at one time to write to Georgie, whom he had never seen—­queer letters, telling very little, full of sly remarks one couldn’t get the rights of.”  Ishmael paused, waiting for the Parson to produce the letter and show it him, but Boase made no move.  “It’s funny Nicky never mentioned it,” went on Ishmael with an odd little note that was almost jealousy in his voice....

“He says he did not tell Nicky who he was,” said the Parson reluctantly.  “I think there is more good in that queer, distorted creature than you think for, Ishmael.  Seeing the boy seems to have roused him to old feelings of home....  He writes oddly, but in a strain that is not wholly base.”

“I can’t make out why he wants to write to you at all, Padre; he always hated you, blamed you so ... for the marriage and all that.”

“There is not much accounting for the vagaries of a man like that.  Your father thought to be ironic when he had you called Ishmael; he saw every man’s hand against you—­you the youngest and the one against so many.  And you have made a strong, secure life for yourself and your children, and it is Archelaus who wanders....”

“Archelaus would always have wandered.  He has it in his soul.  Do you remember the day Killigrew was classifying men by whether they wandered or stayed at home?  He was right about Archelaus then.  Da Boase—­you don’t think I could have behaved any differently to him, do you?  He wouldn’t be friends.  That time in the wood ... you know ...  I always knew in my heart that he had hit out at me, though I was so afraid of really knowing it that I never spoke of it even to you.  And then when he came home after my marriage to poor little Phoebe—­he made the first advances, it’s true, but I never felt happy about them, although he seemed so altered.  I’ve reproached myself sometimes that I was glad when he went away after she died.  I always hoped he wouldn’t come back any more.  What else could I do, Da Boase?”

“I too hope he will never come home any more,” said the Parson slowly, “and yet ... if he does, try and remember, Ishmael ... not that he is your brother—­that would not make things easier—­but that he is not quite an ordinary man, that in him the old brutalities dormant in most of us have always been strong and that he has had nothing to counteract them.  He is not quite as we are.  If we cannot understand we should not judge.”

Again a little silence fell.  Then Ishmael said suddenly: 

“What does feed your soul, Da Boase?  I shouldn’t have asked you that,” he added swiftly.  “Besides, I know.  But though I know, and though I believe in it too, yet I can’t yet find all I want in it.”

Boase lay silent, looking out of the rainy window at the wash of green and pearly grey without.  His hand caressed Ishmael’s as though he had been a little boy again.