CHAPTER XVII

WHEREIN YOU SHALL READ OF COMFORT AND SORROW Thus it befell upon this same afternoon that a small gentleman clad in near-clerical garb, wandering haphazard along a certain leafy by-way, beheld a tallish, extremely shapely young woman who plodded wearily up hill, pushing at a bicycle that jolted heavily on flattened tyre, and one who, despite dust, perspiration, freckled nose and tears, struck him as remarkably attractive; moreover she was a woman in bitter distress, and he a Westerner and chivalrous as any steel-cl…