As travelling companions the two suited one another admirably. They had the wholesome respect for each other’s powers which a month of successful big game shooting together in rough country is wont to engender, and they differed sufficiently in character to give their intercourse a spice of variety. Mr Stratford was a man after Sir Dugald Haigh’s own heart. He had risen rapidly in the Diplomatic Service, until, at the time when the idea of a Mission to Ethiopia was first mooted, he held a responsible position in the British Embassy at Czarigrad. It showed the importance attached to this Mission by the Government, that a man of his standing had been appointed to accompany it, but Sir Dugald, who had made his acquaintance in the East, had requested that he should be chosen. He was an excellent linguist, with all his chief’s powers of diplomacy, but with far more talent for society than Sir Dugald possessed, and with a capacity for self-effacement which seemed to Dick sometimes to amount almost to a double personality. His wild, open-air life among a wild people had not tended to teach Dick to conceal his thoughts, but he had succeeded well enough among his unruly frontiersmen, who felt greater respect for the long arm which could deal a distant and unexpected blow than for a tongue distilling all the wisdom of the ages. It was when he was brought into contact with the more sophisticated townsmen, or with the weaker and craftier races of India, that Dick felt himself at a loss; and he observed, with vain intentions of emulating it, the way in which his friend would apparently give himself up altogether to the trivial business or wearisome pleasure of the hour without once forgetting the object he had in view. That he had never lost sight of his aim was proved by his sudden descent, just at the right moment, upon his opponents, who thought they had thrown him off his guard, but found that they were altogether mistaken. By his superiors at the Foreign Office, Mr Stratford was regarded as a thoroughly dependable man who was always to be trusted to tackle any particularly nasty piece of business, while by his contemporaries and subordinates he was abhorred as a fellow who seldom took his leave unless he saw the chance of employing it in some sort of work likely to bear upon his official duties, and whose proceedings disposed the authorities to expect far too much from other people. He was bound to be ambassador some day, they supposed, but he might allow those who did not aim so high to have the chance of a quiet life.