swathe you about. Many men have never seen their own profiles or the
backs of their heads, and for the back of your own mind no mirror has
been invented. They swathe him about so thickly that the pricks of fate
scarce penetrate to him, or become but a pleasant titillation. And so,
indeed, it is with all of us who go on living. Self-deception is the
anaesthetic of life, while God is carving out our beings.

But to return from this general vivisection to Mr. Hoopdriver's
imaginings. You see now how external our view has been; we have had but
the slightest transitory glimpses of the drama within, of how the things
looked in the magic mirror of Mr. Hoopdriver's mind. On the road to
Guildford and during his encounters with his haunting fellow-cyclists
the drama had presented chiefly the quiet gentleman to whom we have
alluded, but at Guildford, under more varied stimuli, he burgeoned out
more variously. There was the house agent's window, for instance, set
him upon a charming little comedy. He would go in, make inquires about
that thirty-pound house, get the key possibly and go over it--the thing
would stimulate the clerk's curiosity immensely. He searched his mind
for a reason for this proceeding and discovered that he was a dynamiter
needing privacy. Upon that theory he procured the key, explored the
house carefully, said darkly that it might suit his special needs,
but that there were OTHERS to consult. The clerk, however, did not
understand the allusion, and merely pitied him as one who had married
young and paired himself to a stronger mind than his own.

This proceeding in some occult way led to the purchase of a note-book
and pencil, and that started the conception of an artist taking notes.
That was a little game Mr. Hoopdriver had, in congenial company, played
in his still younger days--to the infinite annoyance of quite a number
of respectable excursionists at Hastings. In early days Mr. Hoopdriver
had been, as his mother proudly boasted, a 'bit of a drawer,' but a
conscientious and normally stupid schoolmaster perceived the incipient
talent and had nipped it in the bud by a series of lessons in art.
However, our principal character figured about quite happily in old
corners of Guildford, and once the other man in brown, looking out of
the bay window of the Earl of Kent, saw him standing in a corner by
a gateway, note-book in hand, busily sketching the Earl's imposing
features. At which sight the other man in brow