y which had gone
before. He made his life in the intellectual exercise of his profession
and his membership of the House of Commons. Upon the deeps of the
emotions he had closed a lid. Yet he had set out with a vague reluctance
to Little Beeding; and once his motor-car had passed Hindhead and dipped
to the weald of Sussex the reluctance had grown to a definite regret that
he should once more have come into this country. His recollections were
of a dim far-off time, so dim that he could hardly believe that he had
any very close relation with the young struggling man who had spent his
first real holiday there. But the young man had been himself and he had
missed his opportunity high up on the downs by Arundel. Words which Jane
Repton had spoken to him in Bombay came back to him on this summer
afternoon like a refrain to the steady hum of his car. "You can get what
you want, so long as you want it enough, but you cannot control the price
you will have to pay."

He had reached Little Beeding only a few moments before Dick and Stella
had crossed into the garden. He had been led by Hubbard into the library,
where Mr. Hazlewood was sitting. From the windows he had even seen the
thatched cottage where Stella Ballantyne dwelt and its tiny garden bright
with flowers.

"It is most kind of you to come," Mr. Hazlewood had said. "Ever since we
had our little correspondence I have been anxious to take your opinion on
my collection. Though how in the world you manage to find time to have an
opinion at all upon the subject is most perplexing. I never open the
_Times_ but I see your name figuring in some important case."

"And I, Mr. Hazlewood," Thresk replied with a smile, "never open my mail
without receiving a pamphlet from you. I am not the only active man in
the world."

Even at that moment Mr. Hazlewood flushed with pleasure at the flattery.

"Little reflections," he cried with a modest deprecation, "worked out
more or less to completeness--may I say that?--in the quiet of a rural
life, sparks from the tiny flame of my midnight oil." He picked up one
pamphlet from a stack by his writing-table. "You might perhaps care to
look at _The Prison Walls_."

Thresk drew back.

"I have got mine, Mr. Hazlewood," he said firmly. "Every man in England
should have one. No man in England has a right to two."

Mr. Hazlewood fairly twittered with satisfaction. Here was a notable man
from the outside world of affairs who knew his work and h