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By Root 931 0

was an old friend of Michael's from College days, a naturalist, and a man of quiet and undemonstrative piety. Between two jobs he had come to give Michael a hand with his new undertaking. He had settled down at once, doing more than his share of the hard work, and introducing his paraphernalia of bird and animal study into the garden. To Michael's great pleasure he decided, for a while at least, to stay. The next arrivals were the Straffords, whose marriage had been on the point of breaking up. Sent along by the Abbess, they dug themselves in with determination. Catherine had come next and her brother later. Catherine had been for a long time an adherent of the Abbey, and more lately a prospective novice; and the Abbess had judged it profitable, both for the community and for the girl herself, that she should make her entrance to the Abbey by way of the Court. The arrival of Patchway had been unforeseen but as it turned out extremely fortunate. He was a local farm labourer who had appeared soon after Michael had installed himself, and announced that he was going to 'do the garden'. Michael was not sure at first whether Patchway was not under a misapprehension about Michael's return to the Court. Patchway's father, it appeared, had been a gardener at the Court as a boy, in former and far other days. However, undismayed and perhaps unsurprised by explanations, Patchway had determinedly stayed on, working like a carthorse and seeming to have at his disposal an invaluable pool of casual female labour from the village. He even made occasional appearances at Mass. Mother Clare had laughed over Michael's account of him and declared that he was perhaps in the true sense of the word a 'godsend', and must be allowed to stay. The latest and most important acquisition to the community was James Tayper Pace.

James was the younger son of an old military family. His higher education took place upon the hunting field, and he subsequently became known as an accomplished yachtsman, and served with distinction in the Guards during the war. He had had from childhood a strong and simple Anglican faith. The custom whereby in certain families religious faith survived as part of the life of a country gentleman, deeply connected with all the rituals of existence, was for James no empty form. It was fruitful of a deep and unquestioning spiritual life which led him at a more mature age, without any sudden crisis or any emotional rejection of his earlier pursuits, to devote himself more wholeheartedly to the call of religion. He began to train as a missionary, but various encounters and further experience led him to decide that his task lay at home. He went to live in the East End of London where he eventually ran a highly successful settlement and a number of boys' clubs. This excellent venture came to an end when he had a serious breakdown in health owing to overwork. His doctor advised him, and his bishop urged him, to find occupation in the country, preferably in the open air; and it was shortly after this that the Abbess, whose information service had brought her news of James's situation, beckoned him to Imber.

Michael took an immediate and strong liking to James. Indeed some ingenuity would have been required to dislike him, he was a character of such transparent gentleness. Michael was also, and more uneasily, aware in himself of a certain clannish affinity with James, something nostalgic, crystallizing at a moral level distinctly below that at which he aimed at present to live, and tending to exclude the others. His converse with James was easy and laconic, and Michael did his best not to find it pleasing for the wrong reasons. James himself was however touched by no such atavistic memories arid his simple and open behaviour soon disposed of Michael's problem. The arrival of James also raised for Michael, as none of the previous arrivals had done, the question of leadership at Imber. When James had come the community immediately took shape as a corporate body. Previously it had been a collection of individuals over whom Michael naturally