Mrs. Clutterbuck went to the seaside without him. He saw them touch seven in the heat of the summer; he was confident they would go further. They fell to six before the opening of August, to five a week later. His sound commercial instinct bade him beware; at four and a half he sold. Then and then only did he take his long holiday away from the strain of business; a holiday marred to some extent by the observation that the moment he had disposed of them Congoes rose like a balloon to a point still higher than that at which he might himself much earlier have realised. But though this secret thorn remained in his own side, to the world he was a marvel; first Croydon talked of him, then the City, then Mayfair, and the sportsmen, and even the politicians. In ever-increasing circles, at greater and greater distances from himself, fantastically exaggerated even in his own immediate neighbourhood and growing to be a legend in the mouths of great ladies, the story of his one fortune, among the others of that flotation, expanded into fame. The story rose beneath him like a tide; it floated him out of his suburb into a new and a greater world; it floated him at last into the majestic councils of the nation. It all but bestowed upon him an imperishable name among the Statesmen of England. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: Habakkuk xvi. 8.] [Footnote 4: The sometime Mayor of Rome; not to be confounded with Sir Henry Nathan, whom we recently came across in the matter of the eggs.] CHAPTER IV Deep in the Surrey hills, and long secluded from the world, there runs a drowsy valley known to the rustics whom it nurtures as the Vale of Caterham. Of late years our English passion for the countryside has discovered this enchanted spot; a railway has conveyed to it those who were wise enough to seize early upon its subtle beauties, and the happy homes of a population freed from urban care are still to be seen rising upon every sward. Here Purley, which stands at the mouth of the Vale, Kenley, Warlingham and Caterham Stations receive at morning and discharge at evening the humbler breadwinners whom economic circumstance compels to absent themselves from the haunting woods of Surrey during the labours of the day. Some few, more blest, in mansions more magnificent, can contemplate throughout untroubled hours the solemn prospect of the hills. Here it was that Mr. Clutterbuck was building the new home. The sense of proportion which had always marked his life and had contributed so largely to his financial success, was apparent upon every side. He was content with some seven acres of ground, chosen in the deepest recess of the dale, and, since water is rare upon that chalk, he was content with but a small lake of graceful outline, and of no more than eighteen inches in depth; in the midst an island, destined with time to bear a clump of exotic trees, stood for the moment a bare heap of whitish earth diversified rather than hidden by a few leafless saplings.