The Shands John Caldigate had promised to go direct from Folking to the house of his friend Richard Shand, or rather, to the house in which lived Richard Shand's father and family.

The two young men had much to arrange together, and this had been thought to be expedient.

When Caldigate, remembering how affairs were at his own home, had suggested that at so sad a moment he might be found to be in the way, Shand had assured him that there would be no sadness at all.

'We are not a sentimental race,' he had said.

'There are a dozen of us, and the sooner some of us disperse ourselves, the more room will there be in the nest for the others.' Shand had been Caldigate's most intimate friend at college through the whole period of their residence, and now he was to be his companion in a still more intimate alliance.