my difficulty! Oh, my dear sir, it's a matter of life and death."

I rose abruptly, in an acute perplexity. "Will it take long, Mr
Shorter?" I asked. "I have to go out to dinner almost at once."

He rose also, trembling from head to foot, and yet somehow, with
all his moral palsy, he rose to the dignity of his age and his
office.

"I have no right, Mr Swinburne--I have no right at all," he said.
"If you have to go out to dinner, you have of course--a perfect
right--of course a perfect right. But when you come back--a man
will be dead."

And he sat down, quaking like a jelly.

The triviality of the dinner had been in those two minutes dwarfed
and drowned in my mind. I did not want to go and see a political
widow, and a captain who collected apes; I wanted to hear what had
brought this dear, doddering old vicar into relation with immediate
perils.

"Will you have a cigar?" I said.

"No, thank you," he said, with indescribable embarrassment, as if
not smoking cigars was a social disgrace.

"A glass of wine?" I said.

"No, thank you, no, thank you; not just now," he repeated with