With inimitable melancholy they sang: "Oh, the Roast Beef of Old England!" Gaston sat back and laughed softly till the curate felt uneasy, till the children, waking to his humour, gurgled a little in the song.

With his thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets, he presently began to talk with the children in an easy, quiet voice.

He asked them little out-of-the-way questions, he lifted the school-room from their minds, and then he told them a story, showing them on the map where the place was, giving them distances, the kind of climate, and a dozen other matters of information, without the nature of a lesson.

Then he taught them the chorus--the Board forbade it afterwards--of a negro song, which told how those who behaved themselves well in this world should ultimately: "Blow on, blow on, blow on dat silver horn!" It was on this day that, as he left the school, he saw Ian Belward driving past.

He had not met his uncle since his arrival,--the artist had been in Morocco,--nor had he heard of him save through a note in a newspaper which said that he was giving no powerful work to the world, nor, indeed, had done so for several years; and that he preferred the purlieus of Montparnasse to Holland Park.
They recognised each other.