“Ah, Winlow, it’s your team against the village.  Afraid I can’t stop to see you bat.  I was just passing—­matter I had to attend to—­must get back!”

The real solemnity of his face excited Winlow’s curiosity.

“Can’t you stop and have lunch with us?”

“No, no; my wife—­Must get back!”

Winlow murmured: 

“Ah yes, of course.”  His leisurely blue eyes, always in command of the situation, rested on the Rector’s heated face.  “By the way,” he said, “I’m afraid George Pendyce is rather hard hit.  Been obliged to sell his horse.  I saw him at Epsom the week before last.”

The Rector brightened.

“I made certain he’d come to grief over that betting,” he said.  “I’m very sorry—­very sorry indeed.”

“They say,” went on Winlow, “that he dropped four thousand over the Thursday race.

“He was pretty well dipped before, I know.  Poor old George! such an awfully good chap!”

“Ah,” repeated Mr. Barter, “I’m very sorry—­very sorry indeed.  Things were bad enough as it was.”

A ray of interest illumined the leisureliness of the Hon. Geoffrey’s eyes.

“You mean about Mrs.——­H’m, yes?” he said.  “People are talking; you can’t stop that.  I’m so sorry for the poor Squire, and Mrs. Pendyce.  I hope something’ll be done.”

The Rector frowned.

“I’ve done my best,” he said.  “Well hit, sir!  I’ve always said that anyone with a little pluck can knock off that lefthand man you think so much of.  He ‘comes in’ a bit, but he bowls a shocking bad length.  Here I am dawdling.  I must get back!”

And once more that real solemnity came over Mr. Barter’s face.

“I suppose you’ll be playing for Coldingham against us on Thursday?  Good-bye!”

Nodding in response to Winlow’s salute, he walked away.

He avoided the churchyard, and took a path across the fields.  He was hungry and thirsty.  In one of his sermons there occurred this passage:  “We should habituate ourselves to hold our appetites in check.  By constantly accustoming our selves to abstinence little abstinences in our daily life—­we alone can attain to that true spirituality without which we cannot hope to know God.”  And it was well known throughout his household and the village that the Rector’s temper was almost dangerously spiritual if anything detained him from his meals.  For he was a man physiologically sane and healthy to the core, whose digestion and functions, strong, regular, and straightforward as the day, made calls upon him which would not be denied.  After preaching that particular sermon, he frequently for a week or more denied himself a second glass of ale at lunch, or his after-dinner cigar, smoking a pipe instead.  And he was perfectly honest in his belief that he attained a greater spirituality thereby, and perhaps indeed he did.  But even if he did not, there was no one to notice this, for the majority of his