safety as I may think proper."

"Certainly," said the Personage on the hearthrug. "Find out as much as
you can; find it out in your own way."

"I must set about it without loss of time, this very evening," said the
Assistant Commissioner.

Sir Ethelred shifted one hand under his coat tails, and tilting back his
head, looked at him steadily.

"We'll have a late sitting to-night," he said. "Come to the House with
your discoveries if we are not gone home. I'll warn Toodles to look out
for you. He'll take you into my room."

The numerous family and the wide connections of the youthful-looking
Private Secretary cherished for him the hope of an austere and exalted
destiny. Meantime the social sphere he adorned in his hours of idleness
chose to pet him under the above nickname. And Sir Ethelred, hearing it
on the lips of his wife and girls every day (mostly at breakfast-time),
had conferred upon it the dignity of unsmiling adoption.

The Assistant Commissioner was surprised and gratified extremely.

"I shall certainly bring my discoveries to the House on the chance of you
having the time to--"

"I won't have the time," interrupted the great Personage. "But I will
see you. I haven't the time now--And you are going yourself?"

"Yes, Sir Ethelred. I think it the best way."

The Personage had tilted his head so far back that, in order to keep the
Assistant Commissioner under his observation, he had to nearly close his
eyes.

"H'm. Ha! And how do you propose--Will you assume a disguise?"

"Hardly a disguise! I'll change my clothes, of course."

"Of course," repeated the great man, with a sort of absent-minded
loftiness. He turned his big head slowly, and over his shoulder gave a
haughty oblique stare to the ponderous marble timepiece with the sly,
feeble tick. The gilt hands had taken the opportunity to steal through
no less than five and twenty minutes behind his back.

The Assistant Commissioner, who could not see them, grew a little nervous
in the interval. But the great man presented to him a calm and
undismayed face.

"Very well," he said, and paused, as if in deliberate contempt of the
official clock. "But what first put you in motion in this direction?"

"I have been always of opinion," began the Assistant Commissioner.

"Ah. Yes! Opinion. That's of course. But the immediate motive?"

"What shall I say, Sir Ethelred? A new man's antagonism to old methods.
A desire to know something