The doctors attending upon him suggested at this time that an entire change of scene would be beneficial, and the curator, far from putting any obstacles in the way of this, frequently urged the patient to go for a month’s holiday to Cornwall. But in this he was met by a steady and obstinate refusal, or rather by complete passivity and non-resistance. Mr. Cromartie refused to take a holiday. He declined to go away anywhere by himself, though he added that he was completely at the curator’s disposal and prepared to go to any place where he was sent in charge of a keeper. After some days, during which the curator proposed first one scheme and then another, the plan of Mr. Cromartie’s being sent away was abandoned. In the first place it was difficult to spare a keeper, or for that matter to find a suitable man among the staff to go with Mr. Cromartie, and it was difficult to find a suitable place where they should be sent. But the chief reason why these schemes were given up was because of the apathetic and even hostile attitude which the invalid adopted to them, and because it occurred to the curator that this hostility was perhaps not without a reason. And indeed there is no doubt that Mr. Cromartie felt that if he once took such a holiday as had been suggested he would find it very much harder to go back into captivity at the end of it, and he opposed it because he was resolved not to escape from what he conceived were his obligations. It was therefore decided that Mr. Cromartie should go straight back to his cage, though it was impressed upon him that he would not be expected to be on view to the public any longer than he wished, and that he must lie down to rest in his inner room for two or three hours every day. In this way, and by taking him for motor-car drives for a couple of hours or so after dark, it was hoped that he would be able to regain his accustomed health and shake off that state of apathy which seemed his most alarming symptom to the medical men who attended him. But before Cromartie went back to his old quarters he was to hear a piece of news from the curator which concerned him very closely, though he did not at first realise the full significance of it.