“Oh, there’s no fear of that,” answered Bulmer; “this precious lake of ours is not two feet deep anywhere.”  And with one of his flourishing gestures he stuck his stick into the water to demonstrate its shallowness.  They could see the short end bent in the water, so that he seemed for a moment to lean his large weight on a breaking staff.

“The worst you can expect is to see an abbot sit down rather suddenly,” he added, turning away.  “Well, au revoir; I’ll let you know about it later.”

The archaeologist and the architect were left on the great stone steps smiling at each other; but whatever their common interests, they presented a considerable personal contrast, and the fanciful might even have found some contradiction in each considered individually.  The former, a Mr. James Haddow, came from a drowsy den in the Inns of Court, full of leather and parchment, for the law was his profession and history only his hobby; he was indeed, among other things, the solicitor and agent of the Prior’s Park estate.  But he himself was far from drowsy and seemed remarkably wide awake, with shrewd and prominent blue eyes, and red hair brushed as neatly as his very neat costume.  The latter, whose name was Leonard Crane, came straight from a crude and almost cockney office of builders and house agents in the neighboring suburb, sunning itself at the end of a new row of jerry-built houses with plans in very bright colors and notices in very large letters.  But a serious observer, at a second glance, might have seen in his eyes something of that shining sleep that is called vision; and his yellow hair, while not affectedly long, was unaffectedly untidy.  It was a manifest if melancholy truth that the architect was an artist.  But the artistic temperament was far from explaining him; there was something else about him that was not definable, but which some even felt to be dangerous.  Despite his dreaminess, he would sometimes surprise his friends with arts and even sports apart from his ordinary life, like memories of some previous existence.  On this occasion, nevertheless, he hastened to disclaim any authority on the other man’s hobby.

“I mustn’t appear on false pretences,” he said, with a smile.  “I hardly even know what an archaeologist is, except that a rather rusty remnant of Greek suggests that he is a man who studies old things.”

“Yes,” replied Haddow, grimly.  “An archaeologist is a man who studies old things and finds they are new.”

Crane looked at him steadily for a moment and then smiled again.

“Dare one suggest,” he said, “that some of the things we have been talking about are among the old things that turn out not to be old?”

His companion also was silent for a moment, and the smile on his rugged face was fainter as he replied, quietly: