'No, my boy, I did not know that. Who told you?'
'John, our old servant, who admitted him. He told me about Jentham just before I went to Nauheim.'
'Did Jentham give his name?'
'No, but John, like many other people, saw the body in the dead-house. He there recognised Jentham by his gipsy looks and the scar on his face. Well, doctor, I wondered what the man could have said to so upset the bishop, but of course I did not dare to ask him. By the time I got to Germany the episode passed out of my mind.'
'And what recalled it?'
'Something my mother said. We were in the Kurgarten listening to the band when a Hiedelberg student, with his face all seamed and slashed, walked past us.'
'I know; students in Germany are proud of those duelling scars. Well, Gabriel, and what then?'
The curate quivered all over, and instead of replying directly, asked what seemed to be an irrelevant question. 'Did you know that my mother was a widow when my father married her?' he demanded in low tones.
'Of course I did,' replied Graham, cheerily. 'I was practising in Marylebone then, and your father was vicar of St Benedict's. Why, I was at his wedding, Gabriel, and very pretty your mother looked. She was a Mrs Krant, whose husband had been killed while serving as a volunteer in the Franco-Prussian War!'
'Did you ever see her husband?'