_A MAN With a SECRET_
There was no one about the station to welcome me and none to direct, but
there were many to stare and wonder.
The moderator of the vacant kirk had provided me with the address of the
house to which he said I should repair. I was in no wise mortified by
this apparent lack of hospitality, for the aforesaid moderator had
reminded me in his postscript that the folk of St. Cuthbert's were
notoriously Scotch, untrained to any degree of devotion at the
beginning, but famous for the fervour of their loyalty at the close of
their ministers' careers.
Whether or not I should have any career at all amongst them was the
subject of my thoughts as I wended my way to "Inglewood," for such was
the melodious title of the house which was to be my home during my
sojourn in New Jedboro.
Beautiful for situation it proved to be, nestling among its sentinels of
oak, upon the highest hill of seven which garrisoned the town. The signs
of wealth and good taste were everywhere about, and my probationer's
heart was beating fast when I pulled the polished silver knob whose
patrician splendour had survived the invasion of all electrical
upstarts.
I heard the answering bell far within, breaking again and again into its
startled cry, and my soul answered it with peals of such humiliation as
is known only to the man whose heart affords a home to that ill-matched
pair, the discomfiture of the candidate and the pride of the
Presbyterian.
The door was opened by the master of the house, Michael Blake, a man of
forty-five or so, the wealthy senior of New Jedboro's greatest
manufacturing firm.
I suppose he looked first at me, but my first sensation was of his keen
eye swiftly falling on the shabby travelling-bag in my left hand, my
right kept disengaged for any friendly overture which might await me.
Oh, the shame and the anguish of those swift glances towards one's
travelling-bag! Can no kind genius devise a scheme for their temporary
concealment such as the modern book agent has brought to its perfection,
full armed beneath the treacherous shelter of his cloak?