upon them for a while the rigours of a ten-fold discipline. It was after
such an occasion that, in writing to James Mesurier as to the progress
of his son, old Mr. Septimus Lingard had paid Henry one of the proudest
compliments of his young days. "I fear that we shall make little of your
son Henry," he wrote. "His head seems full of literature, and he is so
idle that he is demoralising the whole office."

It took Henry more than a year to win that testimonial; but the odds had
been so great against him that the wonder is he was ever able to win it
at all. Mr. Lingard wrote "demoralise." It was his way of saying
"humanise."




CHAPTER XI


HUMANITY IN HIGH PLACES

One day, however, Henry was to make the still more surprising discovery,
that not only were the clerks human beings, but that one of the
partners--only one of them--was also human. He made this discovery about
the senior partner, whose old-world figure and quaint name, Septimus
Searle Lingard, had, in spite of his severity, attracted him by a
certain musty distinction.

A stranger figure than Septimus Searle Lingard has seldom walked the
streets of any town. Though not actually much over sixty, you would have
said he must be a thousand; his abnormally long, narrow, shaven face was