Primeval Force--the thin-faced, narrow-chested, slightly bald clergyman
of the Church of England was thinking--never loses its way, or fails to
sweep a path before it. The sun rises and sets, the seasons come and go,
Primeval Force is of them, and as unchangeable. Much of it stood before
him embodied in this strongly sentient thing. In this way the Reverend
Lewis found his thoughts leading him, and he--being moved to the depths
of a fine soul--felt them profoundly interesting, and even sustaining.
He sat in a high-backed chair, holding its arms with long thin hands,
and looking for some time at James Hubert John Fergus Saltyre. He said,
at last, in a sane level voice:
"Lord Tenham is not the last Mount Dunstan."
After which the stillness remained unbroken again for some minutes.
Saltyre did not move or make any response, and, when he left his place
at the window, he took up a book, and they spoke of other things.
When the fourteenth Earl died in Paris, and his younger son succeeded,
there came a time when the two companions sat together in the library
again. It was the evening of a long day spent in discouraging hard work.
In the morning they had ridden side by side over the estate, in the
afternoon they had sat and pored over accounts, leases, maps, plans.
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