Archie had known similar obstacles before, though they had never been so strong as this. Probably the thought was not yet clarified enough, and for that the usual remedy was a stroll about the garden, a look at the sea from the parapetted wall. He tried this, returning again with a conviction that now he would be able to give words to the impression that was so strong in his conscious brain, and, as he took up his pencil again, again his hand seemed to be yearning to write. There was that coral-lipped anemone at the edge of the water, there was a shoal of little fishes which, as they turned, became a sheet of dazzling silver, ... all that was ready for the hand that twitched in expectancy. But again his hand would have nothing to say to that: the brain-signal showed itself to an uncomprehending instrument. Suddenly, and with distaste, Archie perceived what was happening, and, divorcing from his mind the message that his brain was tingling to convey, he let his mere hand, untroubled by a fighting consciousness, do what it chose. It was no longer in his own control: something, somebody else possessed it. But it was with conscious reluctance that he resigned this mechanism to the controlling agent who was not himself. He watched with absolute detachment the words that came on his paper in a firm, upright handwriting quite unlike his own. "Archie, you have had a warning," his hand wrote. "Now you must manage for yourself. I shall watch, but I mayn't do more. You have got to do your best and your highest. That's the root of probation. But I am always your most loving brother. When you were a child I could reach you... (Then followed some meaningless scribbles). But it's Martin." The pencil gave a great dash across the paper, and instantly Archie knew that his hand had returned to its normal allegiance. At once the sea-thoughts that had occupied him seethed and roared in his brain, and his hand was straining to put them down. He tore off the involuntary message from his block, and, laying it aside, plunged with all the force of his conscious self into this ecstasy of conveying, with black marks on white paper, all that had obsessed him this morning as he swam out to sea, and lay between sun and water, the happiest of earthly animals, and the nearest to the key of the symbol. Then, after a half-hour of pure interpretation, that was finished too, and he lay back in his chair and picked up the Martin-message again. It seemed a nonsensical affair when he so regarded it. What was his warning, after all? What did that mean? He had had no warning of any sort. But it was strange that, after all those years of silence, Martin should come to guide him again, though at the self-same time he told him not to look for further guidance.