other particulars, but I did not care to hear
them. I was moody and distrait. I was wondering why I should bother my
head about so insignificant a person as this Stott.

"You'll be sure to find Mr. Stott at the cricket ground," the
postmistress called after me.

Another two months of English life induced a return to my old habits of
thought. I found myself reverting to old tastes and interests. The
reversion was a pleasant one. In the States I had been forced out of my
groove, compelled to work, to strive, to think desperately if I would
maintain any standing among my contemporaries. But when the perpetual
stimulus was removed, I soon fell back to the less strenuous methods of
my own country. I had time, once more, for the calm reflection that is
so unlike the urgent, forced, inventive thought of the American
journalist. I was braced by that thirty months' experience, perhaps
hardened a little, but by September my American life was fading into the
background; I had begun to take an interest in cricket again.

With the revival of my old interests, revived also my curiosity as to
Ginger Stott, and one Sunday in late September I decided to go down to
Pym.

It was a perfect day, and I thoroughly enjoyed my four-mile walk from
Great Hittenden Station.

Pym is a tiny hamlet made up of three farms and a dozen scattered
cottages. Perched on one of the highest summits of the Hampden Hills and
lost in the thick cover of beech woods, without a post-office or a
shop, Pym is the most perfectly isolated village within a reasonable
distance of London. As I sauntered up the mile-long lane that climbs the
steep hill, and is the only connection between Pym and anything
approaching a decent road, I thought that this was the place to which I
should like to retire for a year, in order to write the book I had so
often contemplated, and never found time to begin. This, I reflected,
was a place of peace, of freedom from all distraction, the place for
calm, contemplative meditation.

I met no one in the lane, and there was no sign of life when I reached
what I must call the village, though the word conveys a wrong idea, for
there is no street, merely a cottage here and there, dropped haphazard,
and situated without regard to its aspect. These cottages lie all on
one's left hand; to the right a stretch of grass soon merges into
bracken and bush, and then the beech woods enclose both, and surge down
into the valley and rise up again beyond