so that Israel and Judah might once more unite in sharing the
promises.'

'Your combined generosity and commercial instinct does you credit,' I
answered. 'It is rare to find so much love for an abstract study side by
side with such conspicuous financial ability.'

His guilelessness was beyond words. He swallowed it like an infant. 'So
I think,' he answered. 'I am glad to observe that you understand my
character. Mere City men don't. They have no soul above shekels. Though,
as I show them, there are shekels in it, too. Dividends, dividends,
di-vidends. But _you_ are a lady of understanding and comprehension. You
have been to Girton, haven't you? Perhaps you read Greek, then?'

'Enough to get on with.'

'Could you look things up in Herodotus?'

'Certainly?'

'In the original?'

'Oh, dear, yes.'

He regarded me once more with the same astonished glance. His own
classics, I soon learnt, were limited to the amount which a public
school succeeds in dinning, during the intervals of cricket and football
into an English gentleman. Then he informed me that he wished me to hunt
up certain facts in Herodotus "and elsewhere" confirmatory of his view
that the English were the descendants of the Ten Tribes. I promised to
do so, swallowing even that comprehensive "elsewhere." It was none of my
business to believe or disbelieve: I was paid to get up a case, and I
got one up to the best of my ability. I imagine it was at least as good
as most other cases in similar matters: at any rate, it pleased the old
gentleman vastly.

By dint of listening, I began to like him. But Elsie couldn't bear him.
She hated the fat crease at the back of his neck, she told me.

After a week or two devoted to the Interpretation of Prophecy on a
strictly commercial basis of Founders' Shares, with interludes of mining
engineers' reports upon the rubies of Mount Sinai and the supposed
auriferous quartzites of Palestine, the Urbane Old Gentleman trotted
down to the office one day, carrying a packet of notes of most
voluminous magnitude. "Can we work in a room alone this morning, Miss
Cayley?" he asked, with mystery in his voice: he was always mysterious.
"I want to intrust you with a piece of work of an exceptionally private
and confidential character. It concerns Property. In point of fact," he
dropped his voice to a whisper. "I want you to draw up my will for me."

"Certainly," I said, opening the door into the back office. But I
trembled in my s