any don't know what to make of it. I see they offer
to send down their solicitor and another official of the Company to talk
things over informally. Then here's another letter suggesting that you
put up a fourteen-foot wall, crowned with bottle-glass, at the bottom of
the garden."

"Talk of British insolence! The man who recommends that (he's another
bloated functionary) says that I shall 'derive great pleasure from
watching the wall going up day by day'! Did you ever dream of such gall?
I've offered 'em money enough to buy a new set of cars and pension the
driver for three generations; but that doesn't seem to be what they
want. They expect me to go to the House of Lords and get a ruling, and
build walls between times. Are they all stark, raving mad? One 'ud think
I made a profession of flagging trains. How in Tophet was I to know
their old Induna from a waytrain? I took the first that came along, and
I've been jailed and fined for that once already."

"That was for slugging the guard."

"He had no right to haul me out when I was half-way through a window."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Their lawyer and the other official (can't they trust their men unless
they send 'em in pairs?) are coming hereto-night. I told 'em I was
busy, as a rule, till after dinner, but they might send along the entire
directorate if it eased 'em any."

Now, after-dinner visiting, for business or pleasure, is the custom of
the smaller American town, and not that of England, where the end of the
day is sacred to the owner, not the public. Verily, Wilton Sargent had
hoisted the striped flag of rebellion!

"Isn't it time that the humour of the situation began to strike you,
Wilton?" I asked.

"Where's the humour of baiting an American citizen just because he
happens to be a millionaire--poor devil." He was silent for a little
time, and then went on: "Of course. Now I see!" He spun round and faced
me excitedly. "It's as plain as mud. These ducks are laying their pipes
to skin me."

"They say explicitly they don't want money!"

"That's all a blind. So's their addressing me as W. Sargent. They know
well enough who I am. They know I'm the old man's son. Why didn't I
think of that before?"

"One minute, Wilton. If you climbed to the top of the dome of St. Paul's
and offered a reward to any Englishman who could tell you who or what
Merton Sargent had been, there wouldn't be twenty men in all London to
claim it."

"That's their