er thought, hesitated and spoke: "No doubt--his keep here is
not expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?"

"It has. He will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when
he slept."

"As a business man," said Isbister, "that thought has naturally been in
my mind. I have, indeed, sometimes thought that, speaking commercially,
of course, this sleep may be a very good thing for him. That he knows
what he is about, so to speak, in being insensible so long. If he had
lived straight on--"

"I doubt if he would have premeditated as much," said Warming. "He was
not a far-sighted man. In fact--"

"Yes?"

"We differed on that point. I stood to him somewhat in the relation of a
guardian. You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise that
occasionally a certain friction--. But even if that was the case, there
is a doubt whether he will ever wake. This sleep exhausts slowly, but it
exhausts. Apparently he is sliding slowly, very slowly and tediously,
down a long slope, if you can understand me?"

"It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There's been a lot of change
these twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real."

"There has been a lot of change certainly," said Warming. "And, among
other changes, I have changed. I am an old man."

Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. "I shouldn't
have thought it."

"I was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to his
bankers--sent on to me."

"I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said Isbister.

"Well, the addition is not difficult," said Warming.

There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable
curiosity. "He may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of
hesitation. "We have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall
some day into the hands of--someone else, you know."

"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most
constantly before my mind. We happen to be--as a matter of fact, there
are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and
unprecedented position."

"Rather," said Isbister.

"It seems to me it's a case of some public body, some practically
undying guardian. If he really is going on living--as the doctors, some
of them, think. As a matter of fact, I have gone to one or two public men
about it. But, so far, nothing has been done."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body--the
Brit