Yet it was not in the Cantonment that Hartley expected to find any clue
to the vanished Absalom: it was down in the native quarter. Down there
where the Chinese eating-houses were beginning to fill, and where the
night life was only just awaking from its slumber of the day, was where
Absalom, the Christian boy, had last been seen, and it was there, if
anywhere, that he must be searched for and found.

What possible connection could there be between an upright, Godly man
who went his austere way along the high, cold path of duty, and a woman
whose husband was madly grasping at the biggest prize of his profession?
What link could bind life with life, when lives were divided by such
yawning gulfs of space and class and race? To connect Mrs. Wilder with
Heath was almost as mad a piece of folly as to connect Absalom with the
clergyman, and yet, Hartley argued, he had not set out to do it.
Something that had not begun with any act or question of his had brought
about the junction of the ideas, and he felt like a man in a dark room
trying to make his way to the window, and meeting with unrecognizable
obstacles.

The small tinkle of the church bell attracted his attention, and,
following a sudden whim, he went into the tin building and sat down near
the door. Mr. Heath did not look down the sparsely-filled church as he
read the evening service, and he prayed with an almost violent fervour.
Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though he was
alone, and the odd imploring misery of his voice struck Hartley.--"To
perceive and know the things that we ought to do, and to have grace and
power faithfully to fulfil the same."

Heath's voice had broken into a kind of sob, the sound that tells of