glass box. I could not imagine a thing more out of note.
Surely of all corners of the world this wild moor of the West Highlands
was the least suited to an Oriental cult. The elements seemed under no
control of Nature. The land was windswept, and the sea came crying into
the loch.

I suppose it was the mood of my queer experiences that set me at this
speculation.

One would expect to find some evidences of India in my uncle's house.
He had been a long time in Asia, on the fringes of the English service.
Toward the end he had been the Resident at the court of an obscure Rajah
in one of the Northwest Provinces. It was on the edge of the Empire
where it touches the little-known Mongolian states south of the Gobi.

The Home Office was only intermittently in touch with him. But
something, never explained, finally drew its attention and he was put
out of India. No one knew anything about it; "permitted to retire," was
the text of the brief official notice.

And he had retired to the most remote place he could find in the British
islands. There was no other house on that corner of the coast. The man
was as alone as he would have been in the Gobi.

If he had planned to be alone one would have believed he had succeeded
in that intention. And yet from the moment I got down from the gillie's
cart I seemed drawn under a persisting surveillance. I felt now that
some one was looking at me. I turned quickly. There was a door at the
end of the room opening onto a bit of garden facing the sea. A man
stood, now, just inside this door, his hand on the latch. His head and
shoulders were stooped as though he had been there some moments, as
though he had let himself noiselessly in, and remained there watching me
before the fire.

But if so, he was prepared against my turning. He snapped the latch and
came down the room to where I stood.

He was a big stoop-shouldered Englishman with a pale, pasty face
beginning to sag at the jowls. There was a queer immobility about the
features as though the man were always in some fear. His eyes were a
pale tallow color and seemed too small for their immense sockets. One
could see that the man had been a gentleman. I write it in the past,
because at the moment I felt it as in the past. I felt that something
had dispossessed him.

"This will be Robin," he said. "My dear fellow, it was fine of you to
travel all this way to see me."

He had a nervous cold hand with hardly any pressure in the grasp