Hartley had dealt considerably with criminal cases, but never with
anything the least like the case of the boy Absalom, and the
speculations that came across his mind were new to him. He realized that
a criminal of the class of the Rev. Francis Heath is a criminal who is
driven slowly, inch by inch, into action, and each inch given only at
the cost of blood and tears. It was little short of ghastly to consider
what Heath must have gone through and suffered, and what he still must
suffer, and must continue to suffer as he went along the dark loneliness
of the awful road into which he had turned.

People who have pity and to spare for the murdered body, or for the dupe
who has suffered plunder, think very little of the agony of mind and
the horror of the man who has held a good position, secure and honoured,
and who falls into the bottomless abyss of crime and detection. Hartley
had never considered it before. He was on the side of law and order, and
he was incapable of even dimly visualizing any condition of affairs that
could force him into illegal action, and yet he felt in the darkness
after some comprehension of the mind of the Rector of St. Jude's Parish
Church.

The rain passed over, and the veranda was crossed with strips of yellow
sunlight, the pale washed sunlight of a wet evening, and still the drip
from the eaves fell intermittently with its melancholy noise, so softly
now, as hardly to be heard, and Hartley got up, and, putting on his hat,
walked across the scrunching wet gravel, and out on to the road, making
his way towards the Club.

Far away, gleams of light lay soft over the trees of the park, the green
sad light that is only seen in damp atmospheres. There was no gladness
in the day, only a sense of deficiency and sorrow, even in its lingering