h of us is but an automatic mouthpiece.

G. A.

THE BRITISH BARBARIANS

I

The time was Saturday afternoon; the place was Surrey; the person of the
drama was Philip Christy.

He had come down by the early fast train to Brackenhurst. All the world
knows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of our southern
suburbs. It looked even prettier than its wont just then, that town of
villas, in the first fresh tenderness of its wan spring foliage, the
first full flush of lilac, laburnum, horse-chestnut, and guelder-rose.
The air was heavy with the odour of May and the hum of bees. Philip
paused a while at the corner, by the ivied cottage, admiring it
silently. He was glad he lived there--so very aristocratic! What joy to
glide direct, on the enchanted carpet of the South-Eastern Railway, from
the gloom and din and bustle of Cannon Street, to the breadth and space
and silence and exclusiveness of that upland village! For Philip Christy
was a gentlemanly clerk in Her Majesty's Civil Service.

As he stood there admiring it all with roving eyes, he was startled
after a moment by the sudden, and as it seemed to him unannounced
apparition of a man in a well-made grey tweed suit, just a yard or two
in front of him. He was aware of an intruder. To be sure, there was
nothing very remarkable at first sight either in the stranger's dress,
appearance, or manner. All that Philip noticed for himself in the
newcomer's mien for the first few seconds was a certain distinct air of
social superiority, an innate nobility of gait and bearing. So much at
least he observed at a glance quite instinctively. But it was not this
quiet and unobtrusive tone, as of the Best Society, that surprised and
astonished him; Brackenhurst prided itself, indeed, on being a most
well-bred and distinguished neighbourhood; people of note grew as
thick there as heather or whortleberries. What puzzled him more was the
abstruser question, where on earth the stranger could have come from
so suddenly. Philip had glanced up the road and down the road just two
minutes before, and was prepared to swear when he withdrew his eyes not
a soul loomed in sight in either direction. Whence, then, could the man
in the grey suit have emerged? Had he dropped from the clouds? No gate
opened into the road on either side for two hundred yards or more; for
Brackenhurst is one of those extremely respectable villa neighbourhoods
where every house--an eligibl