iolent efforts. "They're stopping
at the inn, dear. I've been showing them over the place, and they're
good enough to say they'll drop in and take a share in our cold
roast mutton;" which was a frequent form of Charles's pleasantry.

Amelia sent them upstairs to wash their hands--which, in the
Professor's case, was certainly desirable, for his fingers were
grimed with earth and dust from the rocks he had been investigating.
As soon as we were left alone Charles drew me into the library.

"Seymour," he said, "more than ever there is a need for us strictly
to avoid preconceptions. We must not make up our minds that this man
is Colonel Clay--nor, again, that he isn't. We must remember that we
have been mistaken in _both_ ways in the past, and must avoid our
old errors. I shall hold myself in readiness for either event--and
a policeman in readiness to arrest them, if necessary!"

"A capital plan," I murmured. "Still, if I may venture a suggestion,
in what way are these two people endeavouring to entrap us? They
have no scheme on hand--no schloss, no amalgamation."

"Seymour," my brother-in-law answered in his board-room style, "you
are a great deal too previous, as Medhurst used to say--I mean,
Colonel Clay in his character as Medhurst. In the first place, these
are early days; our friends have not yet developed their intentions.
We may find before long they have a property to sell, or a company
to promote, or a concession to exploit in South Africa or elsewhere.
Then again, in the second place, we don't always spot the exact
nature of their plan until it has burst in our hands, so to speak,
and revealed its true character. What could have seemed more
transparent than Medhurst, the detective, till he ran away with our
notes in the very moment of triumph? What more innocent than White
Heather and the little curate, till they landed us with a couple
of Amelia's own gems as a splendid bargain? I will not take it for
granted _any_ man is not Colonel Clay, merely because I don't happen
to spot the particular scheme he is trying to work against me. The
rogue has so many schemes, and some of them so well concealed, that
up to the moment of the actual explosion you fail to detect the
presence of moral dynamite. Therefore, I shall proceed as if there
were dynamite everywhere. But in the third place--and this is _very_
important--you mark my words, I believe I detect already the lines
he will work upon. He's a geologist, he says,