Helmsley met his flashing eyes without wavering.
"I will not say I have not," he answered quietly, accepting and lighting the fragrant weed, "but it was long ago!"
"Ay, away in the Long, long ago!" said Tom, still regarding him fixedly, but kindly—"where we have all buried such a number of beautiful things,—loves and hopes and beliefs, and dreams and fortunes!—all, all tucked away under the graveyard grass of the Long Ago!"
Here Miss Tranter's voice was heard again outside, saying acidly:—
"It's clear out and lock up at half-past ten, business or no business, duty or no duty. Please remember that!"
"'Ware, mates!" exclaimed Tom,—"Here comes our reverend!"
The door was pushed open as he spoke, and a short, dark man in clerical costume walked in with a would-be imposing air of dignity.
"Good-evening, my friends!" he said, without lifting his hat.
There was no response.
He smiled sourly, and surveyed the assembled company with a curious air of mingled authority and contempt. He looked more like a petty officer of dragoons than a minister of the Christian religion,—one of those exacting small military martinets accustomed to brow-beating and bullying every subordinate without reason or justice.