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AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA

By William J. Locke

London

William Heinemann

1895

TO ONE WHOSE WORK IT IS AS MUCH AS MINE

I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK.

AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA.




CHAPTER I.

It was a severe room, scrupulously neat. Along one side ran a bookcase,
with beaded glass doors, containing, as one might see by peering through
the spaces, the collected, unread literature of two stern generations.
A few old prints, placed in bad lights, hung on the walls. In the centre
of the room was a leather-covered library table, with writing materials
arranged in painful precision. A couch was lined along one wall, in the
draught of the door. On either side of the fireplace were ranged two
stiff leather armchairs.

In one of these chairs sat an old man, in the other a faded woman just
verging upon middle age. The old man was looking at a picture which