Harris, the silk merchant, was in South Germany on his way home from a
business trip when the idea came to him suddenly that he would take the
mountain railway from Strassbourg and run down to revisit his old school
after an interval of something more than thirty years. And it was to
this chance impulse of the junior partner in Harris Brothers of St.
Paul's Churchyard that John Silence owed one of the most curious cases
of his whole experience, for at that very moment he happened to be
tramping these same mountains with a holiday knapsack, and from
different points of the compass the two men were actually converging
towards the same inn.

Now, deep down in the heart that for thirty years had been concerned
chiefly with the profitable buying and selling of silk, this school had
left the imprint of its peculiar influence, and, though perhaps unknown
to Harris, had strongly coloured the whole of his subsequent existence.
It belonged to the deeply religious life of a small Protestant community
(which it is unnecessary to specify), and his father had sent him there
at the age of fifteen, partly because he would learn the German
requisite for the conduct of the silk business, and partly because the
discipline was strict, and discipline was what his soul and body needed
just then more than anything else.

The life, indeed, had proved exceedingly severe, and young Harris
benefited accordingly; for though corporal punishment was unknown, there
was a system of mental and spiritual correction which somehow made the
soul stand proudly erect to receive it, while it struck at the very root
of the fault and taught the boy that his character was being cleaned and
strengthened, and that he was not merely being tortured in a kind of
personal revenge.