vers was a Suffolk man, and had
fagged for Sir Walter at Eton. Their comradeship had lasted a lifetime,
and no year passed without reciprocal visits. Travers also looked at
life with the eyes of a wealthy man. He was sixty-five, pompous, large,
and rubicund--a "backwoodsman" of a pattern obsolescent. His wife, ten
years younger than himself, loved pleasure, but she had done more than
her duty, in her opinion, and borne him two sons and a daughter. They
were colorless, kind-hearted people who lived in a circle of others like
themselves. The war had sobered them, and at an early stage robbed them
of their younger boy.

Nelly Travers won her game amid congratulations, and Tom May challenged
another woman, a Diana, who lived for sport and had joined the
house party with her uncle, Mr. Felix Fayre-Michell. But Millicent
Fayre-Michell refused.

"I've shot six partridges, a hare, and two pheasants to-day," said the
girl, "and I'm half asleep."

Other men were present also of a type not dissimilar. It was a
conventional gathering of rich nobodies, each a big frog in his own
little puddle, none known far beyond it and none with sufficient
intellect or ability to create for himself any position in the world
save that won by the accident of money made by their progenitors.

Had it been necessary for any of them to earn his living, only in some
very modest capacity and on a very modest plane might they have done
so. Of the entire company only one--the youngest--could claim even the
celebrity that attached to his little volume of war verses.

And now upon the lives of these every-day folk was destined to break an
event unique and extraordinary. Existence, that had meandered without
personal incident save of a description common to them all, was, within
twelve hours, to confront men and women alike with reality. They were
destined to endure at close quarters an occurrence so astounding and
unparalleled that, for once in their lives, they would find themselves
interesting to the wider world beyond their own limited circuit, and,
for their friends and acquaintance, the centre of a nine days' wonder.

Most of them, indeed, merely touched the hem of the mystery and were not
involved therein, but even for them a reflected glory shone. They were
at least objects of attraction elsewhere, and for many months furnished
conversation of a more interesting and exciting character than any could
ever claim to have provided before.

The att