"'Sorry I've only one big arm-chair,' he said, handing me his cigarette-case and settling me down in comfort; 'but I entertain very seldom. I should like to be hospitable,' he went on; '--I really think it's in me; but that's pretty much out of the question here. I have no chef, no dining-room of my own, no ball-room, certainly.... Perhaps, before very long, I shall have to make a change.' "He asked me about Freeford, and I didn't realize until I was on my way back that he had assumed my home town just as he had assumed my lodging. Well, all right; I never resent a friendly interest. He sat in a less-easy chair and blew his smoke-rings and wondered if I had been a small-town boy. 'I'm one, too,' he said; '--at least Churchton, forty years--at least Churchton, thirty years ago, was not all it is to-day. It has always had its own special tone, of course; but in my young--in my younger days it was just a large country village. Fewer of us went into town to make money, or to spend it.'... "And then he asked me to go into town, one evening soon, and help him spend some. He suggested it rather shyly; _à tâtons_, I will say--though French is not my business. He offered a dinner at a restaurant, and the theatre afterwards. Did I accept? Indeed I did. Think, Arthur! after all the movies and restaurants round the elms and the fountain (tho' you don't know them yet)! I will say, too, that his cigarettes were rather better than my own.... "I suppose he is fully fifty; but he has his young days, I can see. Certainly his age doesn't obtrude,--doesn't bother me at all, though he sometimes seems conscious of it himself. He wears eye-glasses part of the time,--for dignity, I presume. He had them on when I came in, but they disappeared almost at once, and I saw them no more. "He asked me about my degree,--though I didn't remember having spoken of it. I couldn't but mention 'Shakespeare'--as the word goes; and you know that when I mention him, it always makes the other man mention Bacon. He did mention Bacon, and smiled. 'I've studied the cipher,' he said. 'All you need to make it go is a pair of texts--a long one and a short one--and two fonts of type, or their equivalent in penmanship. Two colors of ink, for example. You can put anything into anything. See here.' He reached up to a shelf and brought down a thin brown square note-book. 'Here's the alphabet,' he said; 'and here'--opening a little beyond--'is my use of it: one of my earliest exercises. I have put the first stanza of "Annabel Lee" into the second chapter of "Tom Jones."' He ignored the absent eye-glasses and picked out the red letters from the black with perfect ease. 'Simplest thing in the world,' he went on; 'anybody can do it. All it needs is time and patience and care. And if you happen to be waggishly or fraudulently inclined you can give yourself considerable entertainment--and can entertain or puzzle other people later. You don't really believe that "Bacon wrote Shakespeare"?'