Get right with him, and you can have a
knighthood for the asking."

Bones blushed.

"A knighthood, dear old broker's man?" he said, with an elaborate
shrug. "No use to me, my rare old athlete. Lord Bones--Lord Tibbetts
I mean--may sound beastly good, but what good is it, eh? Answer me
that."

"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Pyeburt. "It may be nothing to you, but
your wife----"

"Haven't a wife, haven't a wife," said Bones rapidly, "haven't a wife!"

"Oh, well, then," said Mr. Pyeburt, "it isn't an attractive proposition
to you, and, after all, you needn't take a knighthood--which, by the
way, doesn't carry the title of lordship--unless you want to.

"I've often thought," he said, screwing up his forehead, as though in
the process of profound cogitation, "that one of these days some lucky
fellow will take the Lynhaven Railway off Chenney's hands and earn his
everlasting gratitude."

"Lynhaven? Where's that?" asked Bones. "Is there a railway?"

Mr. Pyeburt nodded.

"Come out on to the balcony, and I'll tell you about it," said Pyeburt;
and Bones, who always wanted telling about things, and could no more
resist information than a dipsomaniac could refuse drink, followed
obediently.

It appeared that Mr. Parkinson Chenney's father was a rich but
eccentric man, who had a grudge against a certain popular seaside
resort for some obscure reason, and had initiated a movement to found a
rival town. So he had started Lynhaven, and had built houses and
villas and beautiful assembly rooms; and then, to complete the
independence of Lynhaven, he had connected that town with the main
traffic line by railway, which he built across eight miles of
marshland. By all the rules of the game, no man can create
successfully in a spirit of vengeance, and Lynhaven should have been a
failure. It was, indeed, a great success, and repaid Mr. Chenney,
Senior, handsomely.

But the railway, it seemed, was a failure, because the rival town had
certain foreshore rights, and had employed those to lay a tramway from
their hustling centre; and as the rival town was on the main line, the
majority of visitors preferred going by the foreshore route in
preference to the roundabout branch line route, which was somewhat
handicapped by the fact that this, too, connected with the branch line
at Tolness, a little town which had done great work in the War, but
which did not attract the tourist in days of peace.

These were the facts about th