Selby hastened to put him at his ease. After all, why shouldn't he ask? And then he remembered offering the inn-keeper a fill of hard, Navy plug tobacco. He carried a bit in his knapsack with a view to just such small courtesies. "That's the stuff, sir," the man had said, loading his pipe. "We wondered, me an' the missus, was you a Naval gentleman...?"
But while his mind busied itself over these recollections his companion was talking on in his, gentle way.
"... He is not a very old man: but the Doctor tells me he has lived a life of many hardships, and not, I fear, always a temperate one. However, 'Never a sinner, never a saint,' ... and now he is fast—to use one of his own seafaring expressions—'slipping his cable.' He retired from the Navy as a Gunner, I think. That would be a Warrant Officer's rank, would it not?"
Selby nodded. "Yes. Has he been retired long, this person you speak of?"
"Yes, he retired a good many years ago, and has a small pension quite sufficient for his needs. He settled here because he liked the quiet——" The speaker made a little gesture, embracing the hollow in the hills, sombre now in the gathering darkness. "He lives a very lonely life in a cottage some little distance along the road. An eccentric old man, with curious ideas of beautifying a home.... However, I am digressing. As far as I know he has no relatives alive, and no friends ever visit him. He has been bed-ridden for some time, and the wife of one of my parishioners, a most kindly woman, looks in several times a day, and sees he has all he wants.
"Now I come to the part of my story that affects you. Lately, in fact since he took to his bed and the Doctor was compelled to warn him of his approaching end, he has been very anxious to meet some one in the Navy. He so often begs me, if I hear of any one connected with the Service being in the vicinity, to bring him to the cottage. And this afternoon, hearing quite by accident that a Naval Officer was in our midst,"—again the rector made his courteous little inclination of the head—"it seemed an opportunity of gratifying the old fellow's wish—if you could spare a few moments some time to-morrow...?"
"I should be only too glad to be of any service," said Selby. "Perhaps you would call for me some time to-morrow morning, and we could go round together——?"
The rector rose. "You are most kind. I was sure when I saw you—I knew I should not appeal in vain...." He extended his hand. "And now I will say good-night. Forgive me for taking up so much of your time with an old man's concerns. One can do so little in this life to bring happiness to others that when the opportunity arises..."
"Yes, rather——!" said Selby a little awkwardly, and shook hands, conscious of more than a slight compunction for his hastiness in judgment of this mild divine. "Good-night, sir," and stood looking after him till he disappeared along the road into the luminous summer night.
Selby had finished breakfast, and was leaning over the pig-sty wall watching his host ministering to the fat sow and her squealing litter, when his acquaintance of the previous night appeared. Seen in the broad daylight he was an elderly man, short and spare, with placid blue eyes, and a singularly winning smile. A bachelor, so the inn-keeper had instructed Selby; a man of learning and of no small wealth, who, moreover, dressed and threw as pretty a fly as any in the county.