Dr. Oliphant himself, a tall spare man, seeming the taller and more spare in his worn purple cassock, with clean-shaven hawk’s face and black bushy eyebrows most conspicuous on account of his grey hair, stood before the empty summer grate, his long lean neck out-thrust, his arms crossed behind his back, like a gigantic and emaciated shadow of Napoleon.  Mark felt no embarrassment in genuflecting to salute him; the action was spontaneous and was not dictated by any ritualistic indulgence.  Dr. Oliphant, as he might have guessed from the anger with which his appointment had been received, was in outward semblance all that a prelate should be.

“Why do you want to be a priest?” the Bishop asked him abruptly.

“To administer the Sacraments,” Mark replied without hesitation.

The Bishop’s head and neck wagged up and down in grave approbation.

“Mr. Rowley, as no doubt he has told you, wrote to me about you.  And so you’ve been with the Order of St. George lately?  Is it any good?”

Mark was at a loss what to reply to this.  His impulse was to say firmly and frankly that it was no good; but after not far short of two years at Malford it would be ungrateful and disloyal to criticize the Order, particularly to the Bishop of the diocese.

“I don’t think it is much good yet,” Mark said.  He felt that he simply could not praise the Order without qualification.  “But I expect that when they’ve learnt how to combine the contemplative with the active side of their religious life they will be splendid.  At least, I hope they will.”

“What’s wrong at present?”

“I don’t know that anything’s exactly wrong.”

Mark paused; but the Bishop was evidently waiting for him to continue, and feeling that this was perhaps the best way to present his own point of view about the life he had chosen for himself he plunged into an account of life at Malford.

“Capital,” said the Bishop when the narrative was done.  “You have given me a very clear picture of the present state of the Order and incidentally a fairly clear picture of yourself.  Well, I’m going to recommend you to Canon Havelock, the Principal of the Theological College here, and if he reports well of you and you can pass the Cambridge Preliminary Theological Examination, I will ordain you at Advent next year, or at any rate, if not in Advent, at Whitsuntide.”

“But isn’t Silchester Theological College only for graduates?” Mark asked.

“Yes, but I’m going to suggest that Canon Havelock stretches a point in your favour.  I can, if you like, write to the Glastonbury people, but in that case you would be out of my diocese where you have spent so much of your time and where I have no doubt you will easily find a beneficed priest to give you a title.  Moreover, in the case of a young man like yourself who has been brought up from infancy upon Catholic teaching, I think it is advisable to give you an opportunity of mixing with the moderate man who wishes to take Holy Orders.  You can lose nothing by such an association, and it may well happen that you will gain a great deal.  Silchester Theological College is eminently moderate.  The lecturers are men of real learning, and the Principal is a man whom it would be impertinent for me to praise for his devout and Christian life.”