breed as I do, he would certainly overdo the patriotic John Bull
business, he would be a little too polite to everybody, and he would eat
like a hog."

This then should be my role, and I may as well confess honestly that the
last item appealed to me particularly. I kept on smoking till my head
reeled in the hope of forgetting my hunger, but between pipes I felt
ready to chew my oilskin. Of course I should also keep up a touch of the
German waiter accent, and if this programme failed to lead either to my
arrest or to my friend coming to my rescue, I felt that my reputation
both as an ex-diplomatist and a rising young actor would be seriously
tarnished.

And then all at once a light seemed to be extinguished in my brain. I
ceased to be able to think any longer and my knees felt shaky as I
walked. It was the reaction after what had really been a pretty long
strain of one kind and another. Looking back, it seems now inevitable
enough, but at the time I felt desperately ashamed of myself. Perhaps I
might have been able to pull myself together had I chanced to fall in
with that oilskinned figure again, but I thought at the moment I had
become utterly useless and I felt inclined to throw myself down on the
grass and go to sleep and forget everything. In fact I very soon should
have, when I saw at last some farm buildings close ahead. They stood on
the edge of a small cove and the ground dipped down to them so that they
were not against the sky line, and I had nearly walked straight into the
wall of an out-house before I saw a sign of them.

And then I remember rather hazily knocking at a door and presently
finding myself in a low kitchen with a peat fire burning on an open
hearth and what seemed to be dozens of people sitting round it. I