Fellow-members of the Sixth Form, and close friends, Eves and Templeton were spending the holidays together by force of circumstances.  The latter was an orphan, and lived with his aunt.  She, having embraced the temporary career of lecturer on food economy, had arranged that her nephew should undertake voluntary farm work with Giles Trenchard, whose wife was an old family servant of the Templetons’, and at whose farm, in the Dorset village we will call Polstead, Miss Templeton had visited more than once.  Eves’s parents were in India, and the London lawyer in whose guardianship he was placed raised no objection when he proposed to spend the holidays with his friend.