ted with this
attractive and outstanding personality I have asked about him; but never
with success. And then last week I seemed really to be on the track, for
I found that my new neighbour in the country has also had the annual
custom of spending a fortnight or so in the same Scotch island, and he
claims to know everyone who ever visits that retired spot.

So this is what happened.

"If you're so old an islander as that," I said, "you're the very person
to solve the problem that I have carried about for four or five years.
There's a man who fishes regularly up there"--and then I described my
fellow-passenger. "Tell me," I said, "who he is."

He considered, knitting his brows.

"You're sure you're right in saying he is unusually tall?" he inquired
at last.

"Absolutely," I replied.

"That's a pity," he said, "because otherwise it might be Sir GERALD
ORPINGTON. Only he's short. Still, he was in Parliament right enough.
But, of course, if it was a tall man it's not Orpington."

He considered again.

"You say," he remarked, "that he had been in Persia? Now old Jack
Beresford is tall enough and has plenty of hair, but I swear he's never
been to Persia, and of course he hasn't a son at all. It's very odd.
Describe him again."

I described my man again, and he followed every point on his fingers.

"Well," he said, "I could have sworn I knew every man who ever fished at
Blank, but this fellow---- Oh, wait a minute! You say he is tall and
bulky and had travelled, and his son was in the Boer War, and he has
been in Parliament? Why, it must be old Carstairs. And yet it can't be.
Carstairs was never married and was never in Parliament."

He pondered again.

Then he said, "You're sure it wasn't a clean-shaven bald man with a
single eyeglass?"

"Quite," I said.

"Because," he went on, "if he had been it would have been old Peterson
to the life."

"He wasn't bald or clean-shaven," I said.

"You're sure he said Blank?" he inquired after another interval of
profound thought.

"Absolutely," I replied.

"Tell me again what he was like. Tell me exactly. I know every one up
there; I must know him."

"He was a vigorous, bulky, very tall man," I said, "with a pointed beard
and a mass of grey hair under a panama; and he went to Blank every
August. He had been a great traveller and knew Persia; he had been in
Parliament, and one of his sons was in the siege of Mafeking."

"I don't know him," he said.

*