the best shooting quarter?" asked Lewis with sharp eyes.
"I am just a little keen on some geographical work, and if I can join
both I shall be glad. Due north is the Russian frontier?

"Due north after some scores of the most precipitous miles in the world.
It is a preposterous country. I myself have been on the verge of it,
and know it as well as most. The geographical importance, too, is
absurdly exaggerated. It has never been mapped because there is nothing
about it to map, no passes, no river, no conspicuous mountain, nothing
but desolate, unvaried rock. The pass to Yarkand goes to the east, and
the Afghan routes are to the west. But to the north you come to a wall,
and if you have wings you may get beyond it. The Bada-Mawidi live in
some of the wretched nullahs. There is sport, of course, of a kind, but
not perhaps the best. I should recommend you to try the more easterly
hills."

The speaker's manner was destitute of all attempt to dissuade, and yet
Lewis felt in some remote way that this man was trying to dissuade him.
The rock-wall, the Bada-Mawidi, whatever it was, something existed
between Bardur and the Russian frontier which this pleasant gentleman
did not wish him to see.

"Our plans are all vague," he said, "and of course we are glad of your
advice."

"And I am glad to give it, though in many ways you know the place better
than I do. Your book is the work of a very clever and observant man, if
you will excuse my saying so. I was thankful to find that you were not
the ordinary embryo-publicist who looks at the frontier hills from
Bardur, and then rushes home and talks about invasion."

"You think there is no danger, then?"

"On the contrary, I honestly think that there is danger, but from a
different direction. Britain is getting sick, and when she is sick
enough, some people who are less sick will overwhelm her. My own
opinion is that Russia will be the people."

"But is not that one of the old cries that you object to?" and Lewis
smiled.

"It was; now it is ceasing to be a cry, and passing into a fact, or as
much a fact as that erroneous form of gratuity, prophecy, can be. Look
at Western Europe and you cannot disbelieve the evidence of your own
eyes. In France you have anarchy, the vulgarest frivolity and the
cheapest scepticism, joined with a sort of dull capacity for routine
work. Germany, the very heart of it eaten out with sentiment, either
the cheap military or the vague socialist brand. S