He found the clergyman working in his garden, and followed him into his forlorn house, the whitewashed exterior of which was stained with faint yellows, greens, and browns by the varied moods of the weather. He followed him up an uncarpeted staircase and across an uncarpeted landing.

The rooms downstairs, the doors of which stood wide open, were evidently used as religious classrooms; for the only furniture they contained was a miserable collection of wooden forms and battered cane-bottom chairs. Of the rooms at the top of the staircase, the doors of which stood open too, one appeared to be the vicar’s bedroom⁠—the bed was unmade and the floor was littered with tattered magazines⁠—and another the priest’s sitting-room or study.