Chapter 34

Mr. Bliss, who was (despite certain poetical tendencies) a great realist, always believed that the name "Silas" was the imagining of story-writers. All his life he had never met a human being who bore such a name; never once had he written "Silas" on any charge sheet. Naturally, he knew that Silas Maginnis had arrived in the neighbourhood. The ruined chapel of Chapel-Stanstead, a veritable Norman relic which, to the discredit of the county, had been allowed to fall into decay, was now made whole, thanks to the gene…