Let us put it on the simplest ground. If you want a beautiful place, near at hand, for a holiday, that you have not yet seen, here it is—Treliss, North Cornwall—take the morning train from Paddington and change at Trewth. If you will be advised by me you really should go down for August 6th, when they have their dance. I could see that you are interested in local customs, and here is a most entertaining one surviving from Druid times, I believe. Go down on the day itself and let that be your first impression of the place. The train gets you in between five and six. Take your room at the "Man-at-Arms" Hotel, ten years ago the most picturesque inn in Great Britain. I cannot, of course, vouch for what it may have become. I should get out at Trewth, which you will reach soon after four, and walk the three miles to the town. Well worth doing. 

 One word more. I am sending you a book. A completely forgotten novel by a completely forgotten novelist. Had he lived he would, I think, have done work that would have lasted, but he was killed in the first year of the war and his earlier books are uncertain. He hadn't found himself. This book, as you will see from the inscription, he gave me. I was with him down there. Some things in it seem to me to belong especially to the place. Pages 102 and 236 will show you especially what I mean. When you are at the "Man-at-Arms" go and look at the Minstrels' Gallery, if it isn't pulled down or turned into a jazz dancing-hall. That too will show you what I mean. 

 Or go, as perhaps after all is wiser, simply to a beautiful place for a week's holiday, forgetting me and anything I have said. 

 Or, as is perhaps wiser still, don't go at all. In any case I am your debtor for our delightful conversation of yesterday.—Sincerely yours, 

JAMES MARADICK.

 What Maradick had said occurred. As the days passed the impression faded. Harkness hoped that he would meet Maradick again. He did not do so. During the first days he watched for him in the streets and in the clubs. He devised plans that would give him an excuse to meet him once more; the simplest of all would have been to invite him to luncheon. He knew that Maradick would come. But his own distrust of himself now as always forbade him. Why should Maradick wish to see him again? He had been pleasant to him, yes, but he was of the type that would be agreeable to any one, kindly, genial, and forgetting you immediately. But Maradick had not forgotten him. He had taken the trouble to write to him and send him a book. It had been a friendly letter 

 Prev. P 14/170 next