clamped with an iron prop. Don't be
surprised if I get up in the middle of the night to hike it down."

They paced the path for a few moments in silence and then he
continued. "It's odd those little things seem specially big when
there are bigger things to worry about. We'd better go in and do
some work."

Horne Fisher evidently allowed for all the neurotic possibilities of
Archer and the dissipated habits of Herries; and whatever his faith
in their present firmness, did not unduly tax their time and
attention, even in the case of the Prime Minister. He had got the
consent of the latter finally to the committing of the important
documents, with the orders to the Western armies, to the care of a
less conspicuous and more solid person--an uncle of his named Horne
Hewitt, a rather colorless country squire who had been a good
soldier, and was the military adviser of the committee. He was
charged with expediting the government pledge, along with the
concerted military plans, to the half-mutinous command in the west;
and the still more urgent task of seeing that it did not fall into
the hands of the enemy, who might appear at any moment from the
east. Over and above this military official, the only other person
present was a police official, a certain Doctor Prince, originally a
police surgeon and now a distinguished detective, sent to be a
bodyguard to the group. He was a square-faced man with big
spectacles and a grimace that expressed the intention of keeping his
mouth shut. Nobody else shared their captivity except the hotel
proprietor, a crusty Kentish man with a crab-apple face, one or two
of his servants, and another servant privately attached to Lord
James Herries. He was a young Scotchman named Campbell, who looked
much more distinguished than his bilious-looking master, having
chestnut hair and a long saturnine face with large but fine
features. He was probably the one really efficient person in the
house.

After about four days of the informal council, March had come to
feel a sort of grotesque sublimity about these dubious figures,
defiant in the twilight of danger, as if they were hunchbacks and
cripples left alone to defend a town. All were working hard; and he
himself looked up from writing a page of memoranda in a private room
to see Horne Fisher standing in the doorway, accoutered as if for
travel. He fancied that Fisher looked a little pale; and after a
moment that gentleman shut the door behind him and