The last lines of his letter were: ‘I have made a curious and interesting acquaintance--a certain Stephanotis Bey, governor of Scutari in Albania, a very venerable old fellow, who was never at Constantinople till now. The Pasha tells me in confidence that he is enormously wealthy. His fortune was made by brigandage in Greece, from which he retired a few years ago, shocked by the sudden death of his brother, who was decapitated at Corinth with five others. The Bey is a nice, gentle-mannered, simple-hearted old man, kind to the poor, and eminently hospitable. He has invited me down to Prevesa for the pig-shooting. If I have your permission to accept the invitation, I shall make a rapid visit to Athens, and make one more effort to discover Speridionides. Might I ask the favour of an answer by telegraph? So many documents and archives were stolen here at the time of the fire of the Embassy, that, by a timely measure of discredit, we can impair the value of all papers whatever, and I have already a mass of false despatches, notes, and telegrams ready for publication, and subsequent denial, if you advise it. In one of these I have imitated Walpole’s style so well that I scarcely think he will read it without misgivings. With so much “bad bank paper” in circulation, Speridionides is not likely to set a high price on his own scrip.’ CHAPTER LIX A LETTER-BAG Lord Danesbury read Atlee’s letter with an enjoyment not unlike the feeling an old sportsman experiences in discovering that his cover hack--an animal not worth twenty pounds--was a capital fencer; that a beast only destined to the commonest of uses should actually have qualities that recalled the steeplechaser--that the scrubby little creature with the thin neck and the shabby quarters should have a turn of speed and a ‘big jump’ in him, was something scarcely credible, and highly interesting. Now political life has its handicaps like the turf, and that old jockey of many Cabinets began seriously to think whether he might not lay a little money on that dark horse Joe Atlee, and make something out of him before he was better known in ‘the ring.’ He was smarting, besides, under the annoyances of that half-clever fellow Walpole, when Atlee’s letter reached him, and though the unlucky Cecil had taken ill and kept his room ever since his arrival, his Excellency had never forgiven him, nor by a word or sign showed any disposition to restore him to favour. That he was himself overwhelmed by a correspondence, and left to deal with it almost alone, scarcely contributed to reconcile him to a youth who was not really ill, but smarting, as he deemed it, under a recent defeat; and he pointed to the mass of papers which now littered his breakfast-table, and querulously asked his niece if that brilliant young gentleman upstairs could be induced to postpone his sorrows and copy a despatch. ‘If it be not something very difficult or requiring very uncommon care, perhaps I could do it myself.’