"Yes," went on the silk merchant, pleased to talk of what his mind was
so full, "and it was a curious experience for an English boy to be
dropped down into a school of a hundred foreigners. I well remember the
loneliness and intolerable Heimweh of it at first." His German was very
fluent. The priest opposite looked up from his cold veal and potato salad and
smiled. It was a nice face. He explained quietly that he did not belong
here, but was making a tour of the parishes of Wurttemberg and Baden. "It was a strict life," added Harris. "We English, I remember, used to
call it _Gefängnisleben_--prison life!" The face of the other, for some unaccountable reason, darkened. After a
slight pause, and more by way of politeness than because he wished to
continue the subject, he said quietly--

"It was a flourishing school in those days, of course. Afterwards, I
have heard--" He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and the odd look--it
almost seemed a look of alarm--came back into his eyes. The sentence
remained unfinished. Something in the tone of the man seemed to his listener uncalled for--in
a sense reproachful, singular. Harris bridled in spite of himself. "It has changed?" he asked. "I can hardly believe--"

"You have not heard, then?" observed the priest gently, making a gesture
as though to cross himself, yet not actually completing it. "You have
not heard what happened there before it was abandoned--?" It was very childish, of course, and perhaps he was overtired and
overwrought in some way, but the words and manner of the little priest
seemed to him so offensive--so disproportionately offensive--that he
hardly noticed the concluding sentence. He recalled the old bitterness
and the old antagonism, and for a moment he almost lost his temper. "Nonsense," he interrupted with a forced laugh, "_Unsinn_! You must
forgive me, sir, for contradicting you. But I was a pupil there myself. I was at school there. There was no place like it. I cannot believe that
anything serious could have happened to--to take away its character. The
devotion of the Brothers would be difficult to equal anywhere--"

He broke off suddenly, realising that his voice had been raised unduly
and that the man at the far end of the table might understand German;
and at the same moment he looked up and saw that this individual's eyes
were fixed upon his face intently. They were peculiarly bright. Also
they were rather wonderful eyes, and the way they met his own served in
some way he could not understand to convey both a reproach and a
warning. The whole face of the stranger, indeed, made a vivid impression
upon him, for it was a face, he now noticed for the first time, in whose
presence one would not willingly have said or done anything unworthy. Harris could not explain to himself how it was he had not become
conscious sooner of its presence. But he could have bitten off his tongue for having so far forgotten
himself. The little priest lapsed into silence. Only once he said,
looking up and speaking in a low voice that was not intended to be
overheard, but that evidently _was_ overheard, "You will find it
different." Presently he rose and left the table with a polite bow that
included both the others. And, after him, from the far end rose also the figure in the tweed suit,
leaving Harris by himself. He sat on for a bit in the darkening room, sipping his coffee and
smoking his fifteen-pfennig cigar, till the girl came in to light the
oil lamps. He felt vexed with himself for his lapse from good manners,
yet hardly able to account for it. Most likely, he reflected, he had
been annoyed because the priest had unintentionally changed the pleasant
character of his dream by introducing a jarring note. Later he must seek
an opportunity to make amends. At present, however, he was too impatient
for his walk to the school, and he took his stick and hat and passed out
into the open air. And, as he crossed before the Gasthaus, he noticed that the priest and
the man in the tweed suit were engaged already in such deep conversation
that they hardly noticed him as he passed and raised his hat. He started off briskly, well remembering the way, and hoping to reach
the village in time to have a word with one of the Brüder. They might
even ask him in for a cup of coffee. He felt sure of his welcome, and
the old memories were in full possession once more. The hour of return
was a matter of no consequence whatever. It was then just after seven o'clock, and the October evening was
drawing in with chill airs from the recesses of the forest. The road
plunged straight from the railway clearing into its depths, and in a
very few minutes the trees engulfed him and the clack of his boots fell
dead and echoless against the serried stems of a million firs. It was
very black; one trunk was hardly distinguishable from another. He walked
smartly, swinging his holly stick. Once or twice he passed a peasant on
his way to bed, and the guttural "Gruss Got," unheard for so long,
emphasised the passage of time, while yet making it seem as nothing. A
fresh group of pictures crowded his mind. Again the figures of former
schoolfellows flitted out of the forest and kept pace by his side,
whispering of the doings of long ago. One reverie stepped hard upon the
heels of another. Every turn in the road, every clearing of the forest,
he knew, and each in turn brought forgotten associations to life. He
enjoyed himself thoroughly. He marched on and on. There was powdered gold in the sky till the moon
rose, and then a wind of faint silver spread silently between the earth
and stars. He saw the tips of the fir trees shimmer, and heard them
whisper as the breeze turned their needles towards the light. The
mountain air was indescribably sweet. The road shone like the foam of a
river through the gloom. White moths flitted here and there like silent
thoughts across his path, and a hundred smells greeted him from the
forest caverns across the years. Then, when he least expected it, the trees fell away abruptly on both
sides, and he stood on the edge of the village clearing. He walked faster. There lay the familiar outlines of the houses, sheeted
with silver; there stood the trees in the little central square with the
fountain and small green lawns; there loomed the shape of the church
next to the Gasthof der Brüdergemeinde; and just beyond, dimly rising
into the sky, he saw with a sudden thrill the mass of the huge school
building, blocked castlelike with deep shadows in the moonlight,
standing square and formidable to face him after the silences of more
than a quarter of a century. He passed quickly down the deserted village street and stopped close
beneath its shadow, staring up at the walls that had once held him
prisoner for two years--two unbroken years of discipline and
homesickness. Memories and emotions surged through his mind; for the
most vivid sensations of his youth had focused about this spot, and it
was here he had first begun to live and learn values.