"I wonder why that is," said Ronder; "there are no hills round about to keep it. There's hardly a hill of any size in the whole of South Glebeshire."
"Of course, Polchester's in a hollow," said Brandon. "Except for the Cathedral, of course. I always envy Lady St. Leath her elevation."
"A fine site, the Castle," said Ronder. "They must get a continual breeze up there."
"They do," said Brandon. "Whenever I'm up there there's a wind."
This most edifying conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the Reverend Charles Ponting. Mr. Ponting was very long, very thin and very black, his cadaverous cheeks resembling in their colour nothing so much as good fountain-pen ink. He spoke always in a high, melancholy and chanting voice. He was undoubtedly effeminate in his movements, and he had an air of superior secrecy about the affairs of the Bishop that people sometimes found very trying. But he was a good man and a zealous, and entirely devoted to his lord and master.
"Ha! Archdeacon.... Ha! Canon. His lordship will be down in one moment. He has asked me to make his apologies for not being here to receive you. He is just finishing something of rather especial importance."
The Bishop, however, entered a moment later. He was a little, frail man, walking with the aid of a stick. He had snow-white hair, rather thick and long, pale cheeks and eyes of a bright china-blue. He had that quality, given to only a few in this world of happy mediocrities, of filling, at once, any room into which he entered with the strength and fragrance of his spirit. So strong, fearless and beautiful was his soul that it shone through the frail compass of his body with an unfaltering light. No one had ever doubted the goodness and splendour of the man's character. Men might call his body old and feeble and past the work that it was still called upon to perform. They might speak of him as guileless, as too innocent of this world's slippery ways, as trusting where no child of six years of age would have trusted; these things might have been, and were, said, but no man, woman, nor child, looking upon him, hesitated to realise that here was some one who had walked and talked with God and in whom there was no shadow of deceit nor evil thought. Old Glasgow Parmiter, the lawyer, the wickedest old man Polchester had ever known, said once of him, "If there's a hell, I suppose I'm going to it, and I'm sure I don't care. There may be one and there may not. I know there's a heaven. Purcell lives there."
His voice, which was soft and strong, had at its heart a tiny stammer which came out now and then with a hesitating, almost childish, charm. As he stood there, leaning on his stick, smiling at them, there did seem a great deal of the child about him, and Brandon, Ponting and Ronder suddenly seemed old, wicked and soiled in the world's ways.
"Please forgive me," he said, "for not being down when you came. I move slowly now.... Luncheon is ready, I know. Shall we go in?"
The four men crossed the stone-flagged hall into the diningroom where Appleford stood, devoutly, as one about to perform a solemn rite. The dining-room was high-ceilinged with a fireplace of old red brick fronted with black oak beams. The walls were plain whitewash, and they carried only one picture, a large copy of Dürer's "Knight and the Devil." The high, broad windows looked out on to the sloping lawn whose green now danced and sparkled under the sun. The trees that closed it in were purple shadowed.