s in the dark interior.

Fisher's weary eye wandered round the dusty and dreary inn parlor
and rested dreamily on a glass case containing a stuffed bird, with
a gun hung on hooks above it, which seemed to be its only ornament.

"Puggy was a humorist," he observed, "at least in his own rather
grim style. But it seems rather too grim a joke for a man to buy a
packet of sandwiches when he is just going to commit suicide."

"If you come to that," answered March, "it isn't very usual for a
man to buy a packet of sandwiches when he's just outside the door of
a grand house he's going to stop at."

"No . . . no," repeated Fisher, almost mechanically; and then
suddenly cocked his eye at his interlocutor with a much livelier
expression.

"By Jove! that's an idea. You're perfectly right. And that suggests
a very queer idea, doesn't it?"

There was a silence, and then March started with irrational
nervousness as the door of the inn was flung open and another man
walked rapidly to the counter. He had struck it with a coin and
called out for brandy before he saw the other two guests, who were
sitting at a bare wooden table under the window. When he turned
about with a rather wild stare, March had yet another unexpected
emotion, for his guide hailed the man as Hoggs and introduced him as
Sir Howard Horne.

He looked rather older than his boyish portraits in the illustrated
papers, as is the way of politicians; his flat, fair hair was
touched with gray, but his face was almost comically round, with a
Roman nose which, when combined with his quick, bright eyes, raised
a vague reminiscence of a parrot. He had a cap rather at the back of
his head and a gun under his arm. Harold March had imagined many
things about his meeting with the great political reformer, but he
had never pictured him with a gun under his arm, drinking brandy in
a public house.

"So you're stopping at Jink's, too," said Fisher. "Everybody seems
to be at Jink's."

"Yes," replied the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Jolly good
shooting. At least all of it that isn't Jink's shooting. I never
knew a chap with such good shooting that was such a bad shot. Mind
you, he's a jolly good fellow and all that; I don't say a word
against him. But he never learned to hold a gun when he was packing
pork or whatever he did. They say he shot the cockade off his own
servant's hat; just like him to have cockades, of course. He shot
the weathercock off his own ridiculous gild