some thirty miles from Normanstand. Thirty miles is not a great
distance for railway travel; but it is a long drive. The days had
not come, nor were they ever likely to come, for the making of a
railway between the two places. For a good many years the two men
had met in renewal of their old University days. Squire Norman and
Dr. An Wolf had been chums at Trinity, Cambridge, and the boyish
friendship had ripened and lasted. When Harold An Wolf had put in
his novitiate in a teeming Midland manufacturing town, it was
Norman's influence which obtained the rectorship for his friend. It
was not often that they could meet, for An Wolf's work, which, though
not very exacting, had to be done single-handed, kept him to his
post. Besides, he was a good scholar and eked out a small income by
preparing a few pupils for public school. An occasional mid-week
visit to Normanstand in the slack time of school work on the Doctor's
part, and now and again a drive by Norman over to the rectory,
returning the next day, had been for a good many years the measure of
their meeting. Then An Wolf's marriage and the birth of a son had
kept him closer to home. Mrs. An Wolf had been killed in a railway
accident a couple of years after her only child had been born; and at
the time Norman had gone over to render any assistance in his power
to the afflicted man, and to give him what was under the
circumstances his best gift, sympathy. After an interval of a few
years the Squire's courtship and marriage, at which his old friend
had assisted, had confined his activities to a narrower circle. The
last time they had met was when An Wolf had come over to Norcester to
aid in the burial of his friend's wife. In the process of years,
however, the shadow over Norman's life had begun to soften; when his
baby had grown to be something of a companion, they met again.
Norman, 'who had never since his wife's death been able to tear
himself, even for a night, away from Normanstand and Stephen, wrote