terrific action. Spinrobin felt irresistibly drawn to him.

"It is not unpleasant, I trust," the other was saying in his deep
tones, "to find some one to meet you, and," he added with a genial
laugh, "to counteract the first impression of this somewhat melancholy
and inhospitable scenery." His arm swept out to indicate the dreary
little station and the bleak and lowering landscape of treeless hills
in the dusk.

The new secretary made some appropriate reply, his sense of loneliness
already dissipated in part by the unexpected welcome. And they fell to
arrangements about the luggage. "You won't mind walking," said Mr. Skale,
with a finality that anticipated only agreement. "It's a short five
miles. The donkey-cart will take the portmanteau." Upon which they
started off at a pace that made the little man wonder whether he could
possibly keep it up. "We shall get in before dark," explained the other,
striding along with ease, "and Mrs. Mawle, my housekeeper, will have tea
ready and waiting for us." Spinrobin followed, panting, thinking vaguely
of the other employers he had known--philanthropists, bankers, ambitious
members of Parliament, and all the rest--commonplace individuals to a
man; and then of the immense and towering figure striding just ahead,
shedding about him this vibrating atmosphere of power and whirlwind,
touched so oddly here and there with a vein of gentleness that was almost
sweetness. Never before had he known any human being who radiated such
vigor, such big and beneficent fatherliness, yet for all the air of
kindliness something, too, that touched in him the sense of awe. Mr.
Skale, he felt, was a very unusual man.

They went on in the gathering dusk, talking little but easily. Spinrobin
felt "taken care of." Usually he was shy with a new employer, but this