the gray and green colors of the island and the
river, and his rather dreary eye traveled slowly round to the hedges
and the lawns.

"I felt this garden was a sort of dream," he said, "and I suppose I
must be dreaming. But there is grass growing and water moving; and
something impossible has happened."

Even as he spoke the dark figure with a stoop like a vulture
appeared in the gap of the hedge just above him.

"You have won your bet," said Harker, in a harsh and almost croaking
voice. "The old fool cares for nothing but fishing. He cursed me and
told me he would talk no politics."

"I thought it might be so," said Fisher, modestly. "What are you
going to do next?"

"I shall use the old idiot's telephone, anyhow," replied the lawyer.
"I must find out exactly what has happened. I've got to speak for
the Government myself to-morrow." And he hurried away toward the
house.

In the silence that followed, a very bewildering silence so far as
March was concerned, they saw the quaint figure of the Duke of
Westmoreland, with his white hat and whiskers, approaching them
across the garden. Fisher instantly stepped toward him with the pink
paper in his hand, and, with a few words, pointed out the
apocalyptic paragraph. The duke, who had been walking slowly, stood
quite still, and for some seconds he looked like a tailor's dummy
standing and staring outside some antiquated shop. Then March heard
his voice, and it was high and almost hysterical:

"But he must see it; he must be made to understand. It cannot have
been put to him properly." Then, with a certain recovery of fullness
and even pomposity in the voice, "I shall go and tell him myself."

Among the queer incidents of that afternoon, March always remembered
something almost comical about the clear picture of the old
gentleman in his wonderful white hat carefully stepping from stone
to stone across the river, like a figure crossing the traffic in
Piccadilly. Then he disappeared behind the trees of the island, and
March and Fisher turned to meet the Attorney-General, who was coming
out of the house with a visage of grim assurance.

"Everybody is saying," he said, "that the Prime Minister has made
the greatest speech of his life. Peroration and loud and prolonged
cheers. Corrupt financiers and heroic peasants. We will not desert
Denmark again."

Fisher nodded and turned away toward the towing path, where he saw
the duke returning with a rather dazed expression. I