nduce them to lose their way. Farrell had simply told the
Adjutant that he wished to see me on urgent personal business.
The Adjutant could not hesitate before a presence that might, in
its dress-clothes and sable-lined overcoat, have stood among the
statues outside for personified Opulence.

"'Very good,' said he. 'Oh, yes, certainly. I will send for the
man. . . . Your business is private, you say? . . . I am very
sorry: we are all at sixes and sevens here, with every office
crowded. But there's an empty saloon--one of those absurdities
with which the management in old days sought to tickle the
public taste. They are going to turn it into a ward in a couple
of days, and that's why we have left it unoccupied. If that
will do, and you'll come with me, we'll see if the electric
light functions. I believe the fitters were at work there this
afternoon.'"

"That, as Farrell told me ten minutes later, was how it happened.
For me, when answering the message that a stranger had called to
see me on urgent business, I walked as directed, across the
matted moonlit lawn to this building which I had never visited
before--and when, pushing the door wide, I saw Farrell standing
under the electric lamps, with his dog beside him--I fell back a
pace and half-turned to run for it.

"For he was alone, yet not alone: a hundred Farrells stood there.
No, a battalion, and all of them Farrells! And a battalion of
dogs!

"I stepped back from the ledge of the threshold. Above the
doorway an inscription in faded gilt letters shone out against
the moon--'VERSAILLES GALLERY OF MIRRORS. ADMISSION 3D.'

"Then I understood. This absurd and ghastly apartment was lined,
all around its walls, with mirrors, in panels separated only by
thin gilt edgings. Dust lay thick on the floor; cobwebs hung
from the ceiling in festoons; there was not a stick of furniture
in the place. But a battalion of Farrells stood in it, and
there entered to it, and stood, under the new electric fittings,
a battalion of Foes.

"Farrell's aspect was grave. His eyebrows went up at the choke
of half-insane laughter with which I greeted him. 'Foe, my
man,' said he, eyeing my khaki. 'So you have come to this, have
you?'

"He said it pompously, with a fine air of patronage, an