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I was fairly dumfounded. To think that a little cut-and-dried old solicitor could absolutely find, not only excuses for this absurd conduct, but a positive encouragement, was more than I could have believed possible. I gaped upon him.

“My dear Mr. Crum,” said I pityingly, “we are not in the sixteenth century. I can conceive a rampant adventurer like Sir Walter Raleigh, let us say—a man with the heart of a lion and the brains of a four-year-old child—setting out on some such wild-goose chase, but that a British peer, of good health and wealth, nigh threescore years of age——”

He interrupted. His spectacles were tilted rakishly on the bridge of his nose, and his eyes positively glinted behind them. He absolutely barked an exclamation at me.

“Yes, my lord; he was all you say. And I am not ashamed to add, that in his case, and with his opportunity, I should have done the same!”

“You!” I shouted—yelled, in fact, so taken aback was I. “You would have gone to this unspeakable climate, to seek out a forsaken French adventurer, to get a clue to a fudged-up cryptogram three musty centuries old! Mr. Crum, Mr. Crum, I should have as soon believed it of the Lord Chancellor.”