The little village of Bohun Beacon was perched on a hill so steep that the tall spire of its church seemed only like the peak of a small mountain. At the foot of the church stood a smithy, generally red with fires and always littered with hammers and scraps of iron;opposite to this, over a rude cross of cobbled paths, was "The Blue Boar," the only innof the place. It was upon this crossway, in the lifting of a leaden and silver daybreak,that two brothers met in the street and spoke; though one was beginning the day and theother finishing it. The Rev. and Hon. Wilfred Bohun was very devout, and was makinghis way to some austere exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the Hon.Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no means devout, and was sitting in eveningdress on the bench outside "The Blue Boar," drinking what the philosophic observerwas free to regard either as his last glass on Tuesday or his first on Wednesday. Thecolonel was not particular.