It is Mr. Crisparkle’s custom to sit up last of the early household, very softly touching his piano and practising his favourite parts in concerted vocal music.  The south wind that goes where it lists, by way of Minor Canon Corner on a still night, is not more subdued than Mr. Crisparkle at such times, regardful of the slumbers of the china shepherdess.

His knock is immediately answered by Mr. Crisparkle himself.  When he opens the door, candle in hand, his cheerful face falls, and disappointed amazement is in it.

‘Mr. Neville!  In this disorder!  Where have you been?’

‘I have been to Mr. Jasper’s, sir.  With his nephew.’

‘Come in.’

The Minor Canon props him by the elbow with a strong hand (in a strictly scientific manner, worthy of his morning trainings), and turns him into his own little book-room, and shuts the door.’

‘I have begun ill, sir.  I have begun dreadfully ill.’

‘Too true.  You are not sober, Mr. Neville.’

’I am afraid I am not, sir, though I can satisfy you at another time that I have had a very little indeed to drink, and that it overcame me in the strangest and most sudden manner.’

‘Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville,’ says the Minor Canon, shaking his head with a sorrowful smile; ‘I have heard that said before.’

’I think—­my mind is much confused, but I think—­it is equally true of Mr. Jasper’s nephew, sir.’

‘Very likely,’ is the dry rejoinder.

’We quarrelled, sir.  He insulted me most grossly.  He had heated that tigerish blood I told you of to-day, before then.’

‘Mr. Neville,’ rejoins the Minor Canon, mildly, but firmly:  ’I request you not to speak to me with that clenched right hand.  Unclench it, if you please.’

‘He goaded me, sir,’ pursues the young man, instantly obeying, ’beyond my power of endurance.  I cannot say whether or no he meant it at first, but he did it.  He certainly meant it at last.  In short, sir,’ with an irrepressible outburst, ’in the passion into which he lashed me, I would have cut him down if I could, and I tried to do it.’

‘You have clenched that hand again,’ is Mr. Crisparkle’s quiet commentary.

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

’You know your room, for I showed it you before dinner; but I will accompany you to it once more.  Your arm, if you please.  Softly, for the house is all a-bed.’

Scooping his hand into the same scientific elbow-rest as before, and backing it up with the inert strength of his arm, as skilfully as a Police Expert, and with an apparent repose quite unattainable by novices, Mr. Crisparkle conducts his pupil to the pleasant and orderly old room prepared for him.  Arrived there, the young man throws himself into a chair, and, flinging his arms upon his reading-table, rests his head upon them with an air of wretched self-reproach.

The gentle Minor Canon has had it in his thoughts to leave the room, without a word.  But looking round at the door, and seeing this dejected figure, he turns back to it, touches it with a mild hand, says ‘Good night!’ A sob is his only acknowledgment.  He might have had many a worse; perhaps, could have had few better.