Thus meditated Peter Barcroft as he paced up and down the crowded up-platform of Barborough Station. He had studied with varying emotions a poster depicting a flabby, pigeon-toed child with one hand over that part of the human form known to infants as a "tummy" and supposed to be ejaculating, "I feel so jolly here." Even that mild excitement paled, and Mr. Barcroft pined for the congenial warmth of his study. The platform was cold and draughty, offering no inducements to linger for the arrival of the sure-to-be belated "ten-fifty." Peter Barcroft was a thick-set man of fortyfive. In height he was a good two inches shorter than his airman son. He was clean shaven. Had he removed his Norfolk cap it might have been noticed that his iron-grey hair showed thin on his temples and was conspicuously absent on the top of his head. His forehead was high, and in conjunction with two vertical wrinkles extending upwards from the inner ends of his eyebrows, gave the appearance of a deep thinker. Otherwise there was little about him to give one the idea that he was engaged in literary pursuits. According to popular notions he ought to be wearing shabby clothes of eccentric, out-of-date cut; he should affect a weird type of soft collar and a flowing tie; his hair ought to be long and wavy. But Peter Barcroft had none of these qualifications. To judge him by appearances he was just an ordinary middle-aged man of powerful physique and retaining many of the qualities of a bygone athletic age. He had been living only a fortnight in Lancashire. Why he migrated from Kent was a mystery to the friends he had left behind. Perhaps he did not know himself, unless it was surrender to a sudden, almost eccentric desire for pastures new. Up to a certain point he possessed the artistic temperament. He worked only when it suited him, and generally seized every plausible excuse to "knock off." Yet, when he did settle to his task he wrote at a tremendous rate, and so vilely that often he was quite unable to decipher his own caligraphy. In financial matters he was as careless as a man could possibly be. Rarely he knew the state of his current account. Trivial matters in everyday life would send him into a towering rage, while the loss of a couple of hundred pounds hardly troubled him in the least degree. He would ransack the house to find a favourite pipe which he had mislaid, or waste half a day searching in vain for a certain pen which he felt sure he had left in such-and-such a place. On the other hand, when a valuable and almost new overcoat was stolen from the hall he just shrugged his shoulders and soon forgot all about it.