less old than the mighty mass of stone on which their
ivy-framed windows look, these houses make the casual observer
feel that here, if anywhere in the world, life must needs run
smoothly. Under those high gables, behind those mullioned
windows, in the beautiful old gardens lying between the stone
porches and the elm-shadowed lawn, nothing, one would think,
could possibly exist but leisured and pleasant existence: even
the busy streets of the old city, outside the crumbling
gateway, seem, for the moment, far off.

In one of the oldest of these houses, half hidden behind trees
and shrubs in a corner of the Close, three people sat at
breakfast one fine May morning. The room in which they sat
was in keeping with the old house and its surroundings--a
long, low-ceilinged room, with oak panelling around its walls,
and oak beams across its roof--a room of old furniture, and,
old pictures, and old books, its antique atmosphere relieved
by great masses of flowers, set here and there in old china
bowls: through its wide windows, the casements of which
were thrown wide open, there was an inviting prospect of a
high-edged flower garden, and, seen in vistas through the
trees and shrubberies, of patches of the west front of the
Cathedral, now sombre and grey in shadow. But on the garden
and into this flower-scented room the sun was shining gaily
through the trees, and making gleams of light on the silver
and china on the table and on the faces of the three people
who sat around it.

Of these three, two were young, and the third was one of those
men whose age it is never easy to guess--a tall, clean-shaven,