e, could I just
look over the inside of this little place? I found the large shed where
the lifeboat used to be kept, locked up."

Mr. Fentolin was manoeuvring his carriage. His back was towards Hamel.

"By all means," he declared. "We will go in together. I have had the
entrance widened so that I can ride straight into the sitting-room. But
wait."

He paused suddenly. He felt in all his pockets.

"Dear me," he exclaimed, "I find that I have left the keys! We will
come down a little later, if you do not mind, Mr. Hamel. Or to-morrow,
perhaps. You will not mind? It is very careless of me, but seeing you
about the place and imagining that you were an intruder, made me angry,
and I started off in a hurry. Now walk by my side up to the house,
please, and talk to me. It is so interesting for me to meet men," he
went on, as they started along the straight path, "who do things in
life; who go to foreign countries, meet strange people, and have new
experiences. I have been a good many years like this, you know."

"It is a great affliction," Hamel murmured sympathetically.

"In my youth I was an athlete," Mr. Fentolin continued. "I played
cricket for the Varsity and for my county. I hunted, too, and shot. I
did all the things a man loves to do. I might still shoot, they tell me,
but my strength has ebbed away. I am too weak to lift a gun, too weak
even to handle a fishing-rod. I have just a few hobbies in life which
keep me alive. Are you a politician, Mr. Hamel?"

"Not in the least," Hamel replied. "I have been out of England too long
to keep in touch with politics."

"Naturally," Mr. Fentolin agreed. "It amuses me to follow the course of
events. I have a good many friends in London and abroad who are kind to
me, who keep me informed, send me odd bits of information not available
for every one, and it amuses me to put these things together in my mind
and to try and play the prophet. I was in the Foreign Office once,
you know. I take up my paper every morning, and it is one of my chief
interests to see how near my own speculations come to the truth. Just
now for example, there are strange things doing on the Continent."

"In America," Hamel remarked, "they affect to look upon England as a
doomed Power."

"Not altogether supine yet," Mr. Fentolin observed, "yet even this
last generation has seen weakening. We have lost so much self-reliance.
Perhaps it is having these grown-up children who we think can take care
of us