knew, better than any number of Oxford Dons, how to train and educate the
young. Nevertheless light broke through. Some of Falk's jokes were so good
that his father, who had a real sense of fun if only a slight sense of
humour, was bound to laugh. Very soon father and son resumed their old
relations of sudden tempers and mutual admiration, and a strange, rather
pathetic, quite uneloquent love that was none the less real because it
was, on either side, completely selfish.

But there was a fourth reason why Falk's return caused so slight a storm.
That reason was that the Archdeacon was now girding up his loins before he
entered upon one of his famous campaigns. There had been many campaigns in
the past. Campaigns were indeed as truly the breath of the Archdeacon's
nostrils as they had been once of the great Napoleon's--and in every one
of them had the Archdeacon been victorious.

This one was to be the greatest of them all, and was to set the sign and
seal upon the whole of his career.

It happened that, three miles out of Polchester, there was a little
village known as Pybus St. Anthony. A very beautiful village it was, with
orchards and a stream and old-world cottages and a fine Norman church. But
not for its orchards nor its stream nor its church was it famous. It was
famous because for many years its listing had been regarded as one of the
most important in the whole diocese of Polchester. It was the tradition
that the man who went to Pybus St. Anthony had the world in front of him.
When likely men for preferment were looked for it was to Pybus St. Anthony
that men looked. Heaven alone knows how many Canons and Archdeacons had
made their first bow there to the Glebeshire world! Three Deans and a
Bishop had, at different times, made it their first stepping-stone to
fame. Canon Morrison (Honorary Canon of the Cathedral) was its present