can acquit themselves with equal
credit upon the little field of letters, as some of the very best books
of late years go to prove. The man of letters, on the other hand,
capable of cutting a respectable figure in action, is, one fears, a much
rarer type. Langholm was essentially a man of letters. He was at his
best among his roses and his books, at his worst in unforeseen collision
with the rougher realities of life. But give him time, and he was not
the man to run away because his equipment for battle was as short as his
confidence in himself; and perhaps such courage as he possessed was not
less courageous for the crust of cowardice (mostly moral) through which
it always had to break. Langholm had one other qualification for the
quest to which he had committed himself, but for which he was as
thoroughly unsuited by temperament as by the whole tenor of his solitary
life. In addition to an ingenious imagination (a quality with its own
defects, as the sequel will show), he had that capacity for taking
pains which has no disadvantageous side, though in Langholm's case, for
one, it was certainly not a synonym for genius.

It was 3.45 on the Monday afternoon when he alighted at King's Cross,
having caught the 9.30 from Northborough after an early adieu to William
Allen Richardson and the rest. Langholm made sure of the time before
getting into his hansom at the terminus.

"Drive hard," he said, "to the Capital and Counties Bank in Oxford
Street."

And he was there some minutes before the hour.

"I want to know my exact balance, if it is not too much trouble to look
it up before you close."

A slip of paper was soon put into Langholm's hand, and at a glance he
flushed to the hat with pleasure and surprise, and so regained his cab.
"The Cadogan Hotel, in Sloane Street," he cried through the trap; "and
there's no hurry, you can go your own pace."

Nor was there any further anxiety in Langholm's heart. His balance was a
clear hundred more than he had expected to find it, and his whole soul
sang the praises of a country life. Unbusinesslike and unmethodical as
he was, in everything but the preparation of MS., such a discovery
could never have been made in town, where Langholm's expenditure had
marched arm-in-arm with his modest earnings.

"And it can again," he said recklessly to himself, as he decided on the
best hotel in the field of his investigations, instead of lodgings;
"thank God, I have enough to run this racke