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Sam hardly listened to the latter part of this revelation. He was thinking to himself: "Such news as I've got for the people of Glastonbury oughtn't to be confined to masters and mistresses. Lily is a good girl, a romantic girl, and she'll be thrilled to hear my news. I've always thought there was a dreamy expression in her eyes that showed she was------*

“I've had a great experience, Lily,” he began, “and that was what I came to talk to Miss Drew about. It was yesterday it happened. I may as well tell you if Miss Drew won't see me. I was down by the river, Lily, and I saw distinctly------”

But Lily interrupted him.

“Another time, Mr. Sam, another time, if you pleasel I'm sure you saw something very nice—but I've got to shut the door now. Louie wants to go to the Methodist Chapel tonight and she's going to dress now and Fve got to lay the supper. Missus have asked Miss Crummie to supper—so please excuse me.”

She gave him one of her most dim, beguiling, and tender smiles; a smile that seemed to say, "Life is more full of romance than a simple gentleman like you can possibly know! Even Louie,

when she goes to the Methodist Chapel with Bob Tankerville------"

but at this point she firmly closed the door.

Although Sam was quite in the dark about Miss Drew's new interest in Crummie, the truth was that as Mary slipped away from her, the lonely woman had begun to find not a little consolation in the spell that the beauty of Mr. Geard's daughter had already cast over her. Sam couldn't help smiling as he mentally envisaged the beautiful Crummie seated opposite her entertainer and listening sweetly to her well-chosen words across the silver candlesticks; but this piece of news set him off in Crummie's direction.

“I'll be with Nell and Father tonight,” he thought, “but I'll go to the Geards9 now. I'll catch her easily before she starts, if I hurry up.”

He retraced his steps down Silver Street and soon reached the High Street near St. John's Church. A small group of people were just coming out from an afternoon's christening, and the first person Sam encountered was Mrs. Philip Crow, who, under the advice of Emma, who assured her that “Mr. Dekker be more 'isself when he be preaching to godfathers and godmothers than when 'tis the common crowd,” had attended this brief and pleasant service.

Tilly shook hands witi him cordially; for the gossip retailed by Emma was of a much more detailed and much more authentic kind than that conveyed to Miss Drew's ears by Mr. Weatherwax; and it excited Tilly's particular type of sympathy to think of this quiet young man living by himr }lf in the Old Malt House.

“He's made a mistake and he's & rry for it,” she thought, and vaguely in her mind she dreamed that it would be nice one day if she and Emma could clean up that top floor for this well-meaning youth who had no wife and no servant.

“You must have heard good news, Mr. Dekker,” Tilly said, "for your eyes are shining. They shone like that when you were a boy and Philip and I were giving our first party at The Elms. I recall it clearly, because it was when Emma had just come to us, and I thought she did so well when the dog we had then—we've never had a dog since, Mr. Dekker; but I was weak then and silly about Philip, and Philip was fond of dogs and what was I saying?—made a sad mess in the dining-room.5*

“Mrs. Crow,” said Sam, staring at the lavender fringe of the book-marker which dangled from the large prayer book she carried, and then letting his gaze move to their two shadows, which the declining sun caused to extend clean across the street and which resembled a child's drawing of two fantastic dolls, “Mrs. Crow, I have something to tell you that will interest you.”

“Oh dear!” she cried, “don't look so wild! And don't tell me any of your secrets. Fve never said one word to anyone about you and Mrs. Zoyland, and I'd rather not hear anything.”

There came over Sam just then a desire to laugh aloud. That no one in this town could be brought even to listen to what he had seen seemed like a crazy dream. He felt as if he were living in two worlds at the same time, and one of them, by far the less real and by far the more absurd, was trying to convince him that the other was a fantasy.

“Mrs. Crow,” he repeated with a certain irritation in his voice, “what has happened to me has nothing to do with Mrs. Zoyland. It's a vision—yes! it's the great vision we've all been waiting for! Fve . . . seen ... the Holy Grail . . . Mrs. Crow.”

Sam felt so light-headed just then that he longed to laugh, or cry, or shout. It would have seemed perfectly natural to him if Tilly Crow had fallen on her knees, there and then, upon the pavement, and offered thanks to God. But the little lady only gave vent to a deep sigh.

“Emma always said,” she remarked, looking at him with grave concern, “that if that woman didn't manage better for you and your dear father there would be no telling------”

She had said enough. Sam quickly saw that she regarded him as a well-meaning victim of protracted undernourishment. He lifted his hat to take his leave; and as he did so his chin twitched a little and there was a pucker on his brow. His eyes began to roam up and down the street as if he sought for someone whose shadow was less doll-like than Tilly's.

Tilly saw that she had hurt his feelings in some way and she held out her hand to him. When he took it she detained him, as she often detained Philip when she had misunderstood him.

“I'm sure with so good a father,” she murmured hurriedly, “you could see anything, even angels, Mr. Dekker,” and when Sam smiled at this, she added eagerly, giving to him of her best, “Your floors up there are all oak, aren't they? Aunt Tappity, you know, who was Euphemia Drew's great-aunt, used to have them beeswaxed. Euphemia never likes to talk of that branch of our family, because of the malt business. But we all have a drop of bad blood somewhere, haven't we? But Euphemia can remember sliding on those floors when she was little, so slippery they were!”

When Sam had left her and was wandering down the High Street he felt his spirits a little dashed. “I thought,” he said to himself, “that they'd all cry: 'It's impossible! It's too good to be true!' Instead of which they seemed ready to accept it as perfectly true, but in some way—unimportant!”

He had not got very far down High Street, for it was in his mind to reach Street Road, where Cardiff Villa was, by way of Magdalene Street, when he overtook old Bartholomew Jones shuffling slowly along with the aid of a stick. In spite of its being Sunday, Number Two was all agog to attend to something in his shop, probably to attend to his accounts, for he was a great miser, and the financial problems of his partnership with Mr. Evans seemed, sometimes, well-nigh insoluble.

The old man greeted Sam with effusiveness. He had known him from his childhood, and Sam had sold to him many of his Cambridge books. He now took the opportunity of informing Number Two of the feeble state in which he had left Number One that morning.

“I've a-allus told he,” said Mr. Jones, "that the 'orspital was the place for we old folk when our innards turn foul on us. Look at my girt zisty! If it weren't for that clever head-doctor. who studied me case with all them European engines, where would I be now? Abe Twig, he be a fool when it comes to taking care of 'isself. He do say trust nature; whereas I do say, 'tis nature what did the damage. Us must go farther afield for the cure of thik damage. Us must go to Science/'

While he was thus speaking, Mr. Jones was staring in sorrowful wonder at his interlocutor's bound-up wrist.

“Seems to me, Sir,” he remarked, “you'd do no harm to go to 'orspital, your own self. That wrist o' your'n be bleedin' into bandage.”

Sam instinctively touched Angela's handkerchief with the tip of one of his fingers.

“I'm too excited today to think of hospitals, Mr. Jones,” he said. “Do you know what's happened to me, my friend?”'

He lowered his voice to an intense and concentrated whisper. “You ain't gone and murdered Mr. Zoyland, have 'ee?” cried Number Two, retreating a pace or so from the proximity of this excited adulterer.

“No, no, my good man, Mr. Zoyland and I have never even had a fight and certainly are not likely to now.”

As Sam spoke, the thought came into his head—“Alone at Whitelake; alone at Whitelake------”

But Mr. Jones looked up the street and down the street. Then he remarked: “I've still got that grand edition of Saint Augustine. I suppose you don't feel inclined to------”

But Sam interrupted him. “Do you know what my fellow-workers call me these days, Mr. Jones?”

“A darned ninny!” was what leapt up in Number Two's mind; but he responded soothingly, as if addressing a candidate for the county asylum: “I've a-heered, Sir, that down in Paradise they name ?ee Holy Sam.”

Sam nodded his head, and then began working the muscles of his chin so violently that the old man longed, as he afterwards explained to Mr. Evans, “to catch hold of that monkey-face and quiet 'un.”

“I want to tell everyone in the town,” cried Sam, “what has happened. For the most important thing has happened that could happen; and I have seen it”

The tone in which he said this and the gleaming light in his eyes alarmed Mr. Jones but it occurred to him that it was just in states of mind of this kind that young gentlemen were liable to buy expensive theological books.

“It's the best Saint Augustine on the market,” he said.

“I saw Eternity this morning,” remarked Sam. Whether in the long history of Glastonbury, anyone had uttered these simple words before, no one knows, but if anyone lutd done so, the chances are that the remark was received in the same manner then as now.

“It's a Baskerville edition,” insisted Bartholomew Jones.

Sam bade him good afternoon, and strode off quicker than the old man could follow. He had fully expected to be ridiculed or scoffed at for his revelation; but it had never entered his head that his great difficulty would be to arouse any interest in it. He began to wonder if he were, after all, the only person who had seen the Grail since the ancient days. Perhaps the Grail had appeared to a great many people and not one of these people had been able to persuade anyone even to attend to what they had to say about it! Perhaps life in Glastonbury was full of such miracles; and yet those who reported them always found their excitement falling on deaf ears.

He soon reached the curiosity shop itself. At the door he met Red Robinson, who was about to attend a meeting of the Comrades in their old meeting-place at the top of the house. Mr. Robinson looked a good deal sprucer and more neatly dressed than when he had accosted Sam last Spring at the gate of St. John's churchyard. He had a white collar on now; but he still wore the same old, brown cloth cap, pulled down rather rakishly over his forehead and tilted a little to one side. This cap, whatever else he wore, brought into the Glastonbury High Street an indescribable air of Whitechapel and the Old Kent Road.

It came over Sam with a rush of emotion how it had been Robinson's speech, reporting Crummie's words, that had started him upon this whole new psychic pilgrimage.

“ 'Ee 'as the fice of a sighnt,” had been the man's rendering of Crummie's fatal sentence; and it all came back to Sam now, together with Nell's words across the empty tomb of St. Joseph, breaking the news of her return to Zoyland's bed.

“Hullo, Robinson! Are you speaking up there tonight?” said Sam with the affable though rather forced geniality of the parson's son addressing a working-man.

Red gave him a furtive, challenging look, and yet a quizzical look—the sort of look that a terrier caught in the mouth of a rabbit hole would give a setter, as it passed gravely by, on the trail of a covey of partridges.

“We'll be doing something better than speak soon,” retorted the man. “There'll be a fine stir in Glastonbury soon—and some that I knows on—some bewgers what doesn't know what's coming to 'em will 'ave to tike notice!”

“I hear that you and young Trent and Mr. Spear have been appointed our new aldermen,” said Sam politely.

“Aldermen, do yer call it?” snorted Red contemptuously. “We'll be more than aldermen shortly, Mister; just as Bloody Johnny's more than a Mayor to-die!”

“Yes, I've heard something about this,1' said Sam. ”It's a kind of independent Commune, they tell me, that you're setting up. Well, I wish you good luck, Robinson! I've nothing against any arrangement that brings more meat into the larders of our poor people."

But in his inevitable desire to take exception to anything that a Vicar's son might say, Red now veered round.

“But it's a bleedin' farce, hall the sime! That's what Fm goirfg to tell 'em in a minute. Commune? 'Ell! This 'ere stunt 'as its pint, in miking some bewgers we know cough up a bit, but there'll be no Commune in this 'ere bleedin' 'ole till we've got 'old of the bank and the rileway.”

“Well,” repeated Sam, “Fm for you, Robinson. But I wish you could persuade some of the labouring men of this town to be a little less savage when a person works along side of them,” Red eyed him with malevolent glee.

“So yer finds it haint all 'unny, does yer, doing the jobs you blighters have put on us for hall these years? You're beginning to know, are yer, what it tighsts like to eat 'umble pie?”

"But if the working-man has been ill-used, as no doubt he has, why should he take it out on those who wish him well?5'

“Tike it out, do yer sigh?” cried Red Robinson indignantly. “That's just like you virtuous gentlemen. What's got on our nerves is that very sime tone of yours. It's your why of tiking things! Is a man a foot-stool, Mister ? Is a man a piece of bleedin* junk, that a bloke should sigh to you: c 'ow kind yer are, Mr. Dekker, Hesquire' ”—Red's whole frame quivered with sarcasm —“6 'ow kind yer are to work side by side with us and to use yer own fine 'ands along of us!'”

He paused for a second and then spoke with such a rush of formidable emotion that Sam, with all his preoccupied excitement, was considerably impressed.

"Don't yer see . . . will you hupper-classes never see . . . that youVe been just sitting, 'eavy and sife, on the top of us workers? When a man's been lying on 'is fice, hunder the harse of a great bewger all 'is life long, 'tisn't heasy when he's thrown the bewger of! to talk sweet to 'im. 'Tisn't heasy to sigh, 'Poor rich man, did I 'urt yer when I threw yer bleedin' harse off of my fice?'1'