attended service in your church to-night, and you must have seen him in the flesh.”

“I did,” replied the old man hoarsely. “Sight of him recalled many events of the past.”

“Things that you wish to forget—eh, Mr Homfray?” she said in a hard voice. “But Gordon wants his money. If you allege fraud on the part of his solicitors you had better write to them.”

“Why does Gray send you here? You, of all women! What does he intend to do?” asked the grave old man.

“To sell the property if you can’t pay him. He has already given you several months’ grace. And besides, you’ve never answered any letters, nor have you paid any interest on the loan.”

“Because the money is not yet due,” declared the Rector of Little Farncombe. “If you knew the facts you would never make this illegal demand.”

“I know all the facts. Gordon means to sell the property if you cannot pay at once.”

Norton Homfray bit his lip. Only during the past two years had he suspected his whilom friend Gordon Gray, and that suspicion had that night been confirmed by the presence there of that vampire woman, Freda Crisp, whose dark, handsome face he had hoped never to look upon again. Gray, the son of a rich City merchant, had long been the black sheep of his family, and had, when at Oxford, been sent down from Balliol for forging a cheque to a tailor in the Broad. A few years later Homfray, who had recently taken Holy Orders, met him and, ignorant of his past, had become his bosom friend. After six years Gordon went to America, and not until fifteen years afterwards did the pair see each other, when one day they found themselves staying at the Bath Hotel in Bournemouth and resumed their close friendship.

Now old Mr Homfray was at that moment in serious difficulties, partly owing to his business instinct and his innocent generosity and trustfulness. He was a real upright and pious man who, unlike many parsons, practised what he preached. He had, in fact, stood security for an old college chum who had died suddenly from pneumonia and “let him in.”

He had been compelled to confess to Gray that he was ruined, whereupon his old friend had at once told him not to worry, and offered to lend him the sum upon his little piece of house property in the steep main street of Totnes, in Devon, from which he derived his slender income, the stipend at Little Farncombe being hardly sufficient to 

 Prev. P 9/177 next