Harris, the silk merchant, was in South Germany on his way home from abusiness trip when the idea came to him suddenly that he would take themountain railway from Strassbourg and run down to revisit his old schoolafter an interval of something more than thirty years. And it was tothis chance impulse of the junior partner in Harris Brothers of St.Paul's Churchyard that John Silence owed one of the most curious casesof his whole experience, for at that very moment he happened to betramping these same mountains with a holiday knapsack, and fromdifferent points of the compass the two men were actually convergingtowards the same inn.
Now, deep down in the heart that for thirty years had been concernedchiefly with the profitable buying and selling of silk, this school hadleft the imprint of its peculiar influence, and, though perhaps unknownto Harris, had strongly coloured the whole of his subsequent existence.It belonged to the deeply religious life of a small Protestant community(which it is unnecessary to specify), and his father had sent him thereat the age of fifteen, partly because he would learn the Germanrequisite for the conduct of the silk business, and partly because thediscipline was strict, and discipline was what his soul and body neededjust then more than anything else.
The life, indeed, had proved exceedingly severe, and young Harrisbenefited accordingly; for though corporal punishment was unknown, therewas a system of mental and spiritual correction which somehow made thesoul stand proudly erect to receive it, while it struck at the very rootof the fault and taught the boy that his character was being cleaned andstrengthened, and that he was not merely being tortured in a kind ofpersonal revenge.
That was over thirty years ago, when he was a dreamy and impressionableyouth of fifteen; and now, as the train climbed slowly up the windingmountain gorges, his mind travelled back somewhat lovingly over theintervening period, and forgotten details rose vividly again before himout of the shadows. The life there had been very wonderful, it seemed tohim, in that remote mountain village, protected from the tumults of theworld by the love and worship of the devout Brotherhood that ministeredto the needs of some hundred boys from every country in Europe. Sharplythe scenes came back to him. He smelt again the long stone corridors,the hot pinewood rooms, where the sultry hours of summer study werepassed with bees droning through open windows in the sunshine, andGerman characters struggling in the mind with dreams of Englishlawns—and then the sudden awful cry of the master in German—
"Harris, stand up! You sleep!"
And he recalled the dreadful standing motionless for an hour, book inhand, while the knees felt like wax and the head grew heavier than acannon-ball.
The very smell of the cooking came back to him—the daily Sauerkraut,the watery chocol