window, and by peering closely, one could see dusty packets of
writing-paper and fly-blown envelopes, a few cheap books, clay and briar
pipes, tobacco, and some withered-looking cigars. Below the window,
after diligent search, a slit for the admission of letters might be
found.

But while the place itself would easily have been passed over, not so
the figure at the door; for there, most days of the week and most hours
of the day, stood the portly form of Edward John Charles himself.

It was as though the legend overhead referred to the man beneath, and
the smile usually on his face spoke of contentment with himself and the
world at large. His face was ruddy and clean-shaven, as he chose to coax
his whisker underneath his chin, where it sprouted so amply that the
need to wear a collar or a tie did not exist; certainly, was not
recognised.

Somewhat under medium height, and of more than medium girth, Edward John
Charles was by no means an unpleasant figure to the eye, and if the
commonplace caste of face and prominent ears did not suggest any marked
intellectual gifts, the net result of a casual survey was "a
good-natured sort." He had a habit of concealing his hands mysteriously
underneath his coat-tails as he stood at the door beneath the staring
sign, and his coat had absorbed something of its owner's nature, for by
the perch of the tails one could guess his mood. They were flapped
nervously when the wearer was displeased; they opened into a wide and
settled =V= inverted when he was in the full flavour of his
satisfaction; and happily that was their most common condition. Indeed,
the coat-tails of Edward John Charles were as eloquent as the stumpy
appendage of the Irish terrier usually to be seen at the door with him.

Edward John stood in his familiar place this morning, and surveyed
placidly the one and only street of Hampton Bagot.

The street does not belong to Hampton at all, but is only so many yards
of a great highway to London. If you asked a Hampton man where it led
to, he would say to Stratford, as that is the end of his world. That he
is spending his life on a main-travelled road that goes on and on until
it is lost in the multitudinous streets of modern Babylon has never
occurred to him. Stratford is his _ultima thule_, the objective of his
longest travels.

But Edward John was no ordinary man, despite his common exterior, and it
was in the list of his distinctions that he had in his early manhood
s