Yet it was not in the Cantonment that Hartley expected to find any clue to the vanished Absalom:  it was down in the native quarter.  Down there where the Chinese eating-houses were beginning to fill, and where the night life was only just awaking from its slumber of the day, was where Absalom, the Christian boy, had last been seen, and it was there, if anywhere, that he must be searched for and found.

What possible connection could there be between an upright, Godly man who went his austere way along the high, cold path of duty, and a woman whose husband was madly grasping at the biggest prize of his profession?  What link could bind life with life, when lives were divided by such yawning gulfs of space and class and race?  To connect Mrs. Wilder with Heath was almost as mad a piece of folly as to connect Absalom with the clergyman, and yet, Hartley argued, he had not set out to do it.  Something that had not begun with any act or question of his had brought about the junction of the ideas, and he felt like a man in a dark room trying to make his way to the window, and meeting with unrecognizable obstacles.

The small tinkle of the church bell attracted his attention, and, following a sudden whim, he went into the tin building and sat down near the door.  Mr. Heath did not look down the sparsely-filled church as he read the evening service, and he prayed with an almost violent fervour.  Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though he was alone, and the odd imploring misery of his voice struck Hartley.—­“To perceive and know the things that we ought to do, and to have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.”

Heath’s voice had broken into a kind of sob, the sound that tells of strain and hysteria, but what was there in Mangadone to make a respectable parson strained and hysterical?

V

CRAVEN JOICEY, THE BANKER, FINDS THAT HIS MEMORY IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Just as Draycott Wilder stood high in the eyes of the Powers that govern the Civil Service of India, so, too, in his own way, was Craven Joicey, the Banker, a man with a solid reputation.  If you build a reputation solidly for the first half of a lifetime, it will last the latter half without much attention or care, and, contrariwise, a bad beginning is frequently stronger than any reformation, and stronger than integrity that comes too late.

Joicey had begun well, and had, as the saying goes, “made his way.”  He was a large, heavy man, representative in figure and slow and careful of speech.  He kept the secrets of his bank, and he kept his own secrets, if he had any, and was a walking tomb for confidences not known as “tender.”  No one would have attempted to tell him their affairs of the heart, but almost anyone with money to invest would go direct to Craven Joicey.  He had no wife, no child, and, as far as anyone knew, no kith or kin,