am sure that the least hint that you yourself———"

"I take it you mean," said Mr. Gates with great deliberation, "that you'll tell your lawyers it'll pay them to prick a hole in the deal."

"That is what we call the bluff Western humour," said Lord Eden, smiling, "but I only mean that we do a great deal in this country by reconsideration and revision. We make mistakes and unmake them. We have a phrase for it in our history books; we call it the flexibility of an unwritten constitution."

"We have a phrase for it too," said the American reflectively. "We call it graft."

"Really," cried Normantower's, a little bristly man, with sudden shrillness, "I did not know you were so scrupulous in your own methods."

"Motht unthcrupulouth," said Mr. Low virtuously.

Enoch Oates nose slowly like an enormous leviathan rising to the surface of the sea; his large sallow face had never changed in expression; but he had the air of one drifting dreamily away.

"Wal," he said, "I dare say it's true I've done some graft in my time, and a good many deals that weren't what you might call modelled