Killigrew was just drawing upon the tablecloth, unreproved of Annie, a sketch of a fashionable Parisian lady for Vassie’s instruction when the door opened to admit of Tom, a very rare visitor at Cloom nowadays.  He was in sleek black broadcloth and looked almost as ecclesiastical as Tonkin, and much more so than Boase.  Tom wore a handsome white cravat beneath his narrow, clean-shaved chin, which was decorated on either side with whiskers whose fiery hue made Killigrew’s seem but tawny.  Tom wore also a curious smile on his thin lips, but Ishmael was forced to admit, as he watched him shake hands quietly with Killigrew, that this dreaded and disliked brother had given the most unexceptional greeting of any of his family.

Tom sat down, but refused food.  He had only come out to see his mother, and because it was Ishmael’s birthday, or so he said.

“Is anything the matter, Tom?” asked Annie artlessly.

“No, what should there be?” demanded Tom in a slightly contemptuous fashion.  “Can’t I want to see you without that?  Don’t give me away before the visitor, especially as Ishmael’s such an attentive son.”

Annie began to sniff, and Vassie bade him, in an angry undertone, be quiet.  Tom obeyed, but it was an odd quietness as of something waiting its time.  Conversation drooped as though a blight had fallen upon it, and once or twice Tom might have been observed to glance towards the window.

“I’ll have a drink if I won’t eat,” he declared at last.  “I must drink the young un’s health on an occasion like this, after all.  Here, mother, fill up.”

Killigrew leapt to intercept Annie and fetch her the big cider jug from the dinner-waggon, and giggling like a girl she took it from him and filled the glasses.  Some faint return of gaiety, the sense of it being Ishmael’s evening, returned, and he sat as they raised glasses to him, in a sudden brightening.  As she was tilting hers to her lips, Annie gave a sudden cry, so sharp everyone stopped, glass in hand.  A shadow had fallen across the window, barring the flow of the westering light, and towards it Annie was staring.  The others followed her gaze.

Bearded, brown, roughly clad in a big coat hunched about his ears, Archelaus stood looking in.  He continued to stand, motionless, after he had been seen.  Annie cried out again and, almost dropping her tumbler on to the table, rushed from the room, knocking against the door-frame in her blundering way as she went.  The others stood bewildered a moment, not taking it in, not recognising the bearded figure that stayed motionless, itself giving no sign of recognition.  It was Ishmael, who had not seen his brother since he himself was very little, who yet knew him the first, warned by some instinct.  He got up and went out, followed by the others, who all talked at once though he stayed silent.