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The old man’s eyes beamed a contemptuous pity.

“You are indifferent sharp, my dear sir, for a housebreaker. Come in. Set down those convicting boots, and don’t drip pools of water in the doorway. If I must entertain a burglar, I prefer him tidy.”

He walked to the fire, picked up a poker, and knocked the coals into a blaze. This done, he turned round on me with the poker still in his hand. The serenest gravity sat on his large, pale features.

“Why have I done this?” he asked.

“I suppose to get possession of the poker.”

“Quite right. May I inquire your next move?”

“Why?” said I, feeling in my tail-pocket, “I carry a pistol.”

“Which I suppose to be damp?”

“By no means. I carry it, as you see, in an oil-cloth case.”

He stooped, and laid the poker carefully in the fender.

“That is a stronger card than I possess. I might urge that by pulling the trigger you would certainly alarm the house and the neighbourhood, and put a halter round your neck. But it strikes me as safer to assume you capable of using a pistol with effect at three paces. With what might happen subsequently I will not pretend to be concerned. The fate of your neck”–he waved a hand,–“well, I have known you for just five minutes, and feel but a moderate interest in your neck. As for the inmates of this house, it will refresh you to hear that there are none. I have lived here two years with a butler and female cook, both of whom I dismissed yesterday at a minute’s notice, for conduct which I will not shock your ears by explicitly naming. Suffice it to say, I carried them off yesterday to my parish church, two miles away, married them and dismissed them in the vestry without characters. I wish you had known that butler–but excuse me; with the information I have supplied, you ought to find no difficulty in fixing the price you will take to clear out of my house instanter.”

“Sir,” I answered, “I have held a pistol at one or two heads in my time, but never at one stuffed with nobler indiscretion. Your chivalry does not, indeed, disarm me, but prompts me to desire more of your acquaintance. I have found a gentleman, and must sup with him before I make terms.”

This address seemed to please him. He shuffled across the room to a sideboard, and produced a plate of biscuits, another of dried figs, a glass, and two decanters.

“Sherry and Madeira,” he said. “There is also a cold pie in the larder, if you care for it.”

“A biscuit will serve,” I replied. “To tell the truth, I’m more for the bucket than the manger, as the grooms say: and the brandy you were tasting just now is more to my mind than wine.”

“There is no water handy.”

“I have soaked in enough to-night to last me with this bottle.”

I pulled over a chair, laid my pistol on the table, and held out the glass for him to fill. Having done so, he helped himself to a glass and a chair, and sat down facing me.

“I was speaking, just now, of my late butler,” he began, with a sip at his brandy. “Does it strike you that, when confronted with moral delinquency, I am apt to let my indignation get the better of me?”

“Not at all,” I answered heartily, refilling my glass.

It appeared that another reply would have pleased him better.

“H’m. I was hoping that, perhaps, I had visited his offence too strongly. As a clergyman, you see, I was bound to be severe; but upon my word, sir, since Parkinson left I have felt like a man who has lost a limb.”

He drummed with his fingers on the cloth for a few moments, and went on–