from slinking, and the wolf out of his eyes. He felt restless,
and watchful, and suspicious, as if he had suddenly come down in
the world. His, then, was a disguise as effectual as a shabby
coat and a glazing eye. His heart sickened. Was it even worth
while living on a crust of social respectability so thin and so
exquisitely treacherous? He challenged no one. One or two actual
acquaintances raised and lowered a faintly inquiring eyebrow in
his direction. One even recalled in his confusion a smile of
recognition just a moment too late. There was, it seemed, a
peculiar aura in Lawford's presence, a shadow of a something in
his demeanour that proved him alien.

None the less green Widderstone kept calling him, much as a bell
in the imagination tolls on and on, the echo of reality. If the
worst should come to the worst, why--there is pasture in the
solitary by-ways for the beast that strays. He quickened his pace
along lonelier streets, and soon strode freely through the little
flagged and cobbled village of shops, past the same small jutting
window whose clock had told him the hour on that first dark
hurried night. All was pale and faint with dying colours now; and
decay was in the leaf, and the last swallows filled the gold air
with their clashing stillness. No one heeded him here. He looked
from side to side, exulting in the strangeness. Shops were left
behind, the last milestone passed, and in a little while he was
descending the hill beneath the elm boughs, which he remembered
had stood like a turreted wall against the sunset when first he
had wandered down into the churchyard.

At the foot of the hill he passed by the green and white Rectory,
and there was the parson, a short fat, pursy man with wrists