A shade crossed the brow of the temporary incumbent of Chuntsey, in
Essex.

"That may have been a mistake, sir," he said. "But it was not our
fault. It was all the munificence of Captain Fraser. He requested
that the highest price and talent on our tariff should be employed
to detain you gentlemen. Now the highest payment in our office goes
to those who impersonate vicars, as being the most respectable and
more of a strain. We are paid five guineas a visit. We have had the
good fortune to satisfy the firm with our work; and we are now
permanently vicars. Before that we had two years as colonels, the
next in our scale. Colonels are four guineas."



Chapter 4

The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent

Lieutenant Drummond Keith was a man about whom conversation always
burst like a thunderstorm the moment he left the room. This arose
from many separate touches about him. He was a light, loose
person, who wore light, loose clothes, generally white, as if he
were in the tropics; he was lean and graceful, like a panther, and
he had restless black eyes.

He was very impecunious. He had one of the habits of the poor,
in a degree so exaggerated as immeasurably to eclipse the most
miserable of the unemployed; I mean the habit of continual change
of lodgings. There are inland tracts of London where, in the very