ack. Beyond doing what we could to keep him as fit as a fiddle, there
was nothing to be done.

After a bath I put on a tweed suit, concealed my discarded and sole
surviving pair of white trousers from the rapacious eye of a random
housemaid, and descended to lunch.

An hour later Adele and Nobby and I were all in the Rolls, sailing along
the soft brown roads _en route_ for Fallow Hill.

It was a day of great loveliness, and the forest ways were one and all
beset with a rare glory.

Thirty-six hours before, the first frost of autumn had touched the
breast of Earth with silver finger-tips. 'Twas but a runaway knock. The
mischief-loving knave was gone again, before the bustling dame had
braced herself to open to her pert visitor. Maybe the rogue was beating
up his quarters. The time of his dreaded lodgment was not yet. His
apprehensive hostess was full of smiles. Summer was staying on....

Yet on the livery of the countryside the accolade of Frost had wrought a
wonder. Two days ago the world was green. To-day a million leaves
glanced, green as before, yet with a new-found lustre--something of red
in it, something of gold, something of sober brown. But the wonder was
not to the trees. It was the humble bracken that had been dubbed knight.
The homespun of the forest was become cloth of pure gold, glittering,
flawless. In the twinkling of an eye the change had come. Here was an
acre spread with the delicate fronds, and there a ragged mile, and
yonder but shreds and patches--yet all of magic gold, flinging the
sunlight back, lighting the shadows, making the humblest ride too rich
for kings to trample till the green roofs and walls looked dull beside
it, and the ephemeral magnificence took Memory by the throat and wrung a
lease of life from that Reversioner.

"Tell me," I said, "of Mr. Bason. He interests me, and I've never seen
him."

"Mr. Bason," said Adele, "is short and fat and--yes, I'm afraid he's
greasy. He has bright yellow hair and a ridiculous moustache, which is
brushed up on end on each side of his nostrils. He has very watery pale
blue eyes, and all the blood in his face seems to have gone to his
nose."

"Muscular rheumatism," I suggested.

"I guess so. Of course, he knows best, and I don't pretend to say what
men should wear, but white flannel suits aren't becoming to every
figure, are they? Most of the rest of him was mauve--shirt, socks and
handkerchief. Oh, and he had a tie on his pin."

"But how l