GILBERT BROWN, second Baron Lothersdale, was generally regarded as being the best business man in the country. His talent for affairs was doubtless hereditary, as his father had successfully kept a big emporium before seeking the parliamentary honours which led to higher things. His son, in his turn, entered Parliament, and quickly ran the gamut of two under-secretaryships and the Cabinet. The Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland and the Governor-Generalship of India would undoubtedly have been his, but for the impossibility of associating Brown's Bayswater Bazaar with those regal positions. When, therefore, the last of six successive schemes for the reorganisation of the British Army had fallen to the parliamentary floor and broken in pieces, it was felt that there was only one man who could tackle the matter, and bring it to a successful issue. Lord Lothersdale's tenure of the Postmaster-Generalship was remembered with pride by a grateful nation. Under his management the reply-postcard business, which had hitherto dragged and lost money, had become a popular and remunerative department, while his penny-in-the-slot form of application for Government annuities was an innovation as brilliant in conception as it was profitable in results. When the country learnt that to Lord Lothersdale had been entrusted the task of reforming the Army it heaved a sigh of content, for it knew that the work was now as good as done; and when the news reached the Continent the officers of the Great General Staff of the German Army were noticed to wear a sad and pensive look unusual to them. To accomplish the work that in the past twenty years alone had cost thousands of lives and millions of money, besides incidentally destroying six first-class parliamentary reputations, Lord Lothersdale retired to Moors, his Berkshire seat, and there, in his study overlooking the deer park, he accumulated his evidence and dictated his Report. From time to time paragraphs appeared in the papers that Lord Lothersdale was busy at his work, or that he was making progress therein, and at last word went round that he was now putting the final touches to his Report, which would be laid before the Cabinet the following week. Then it was that his Grace of Dorchester decided that Mr. Drummond Eyre must show the same Report at the next meeting of the Burglars' Club, if he wished to continue his membership thereof. George Drummond Eyre was a Leicestershire man, an ex-guardsman, and a shooter of big game. He received the news of his mission without comment, and proceeded to make himself acquainted with the habits of his lordship of Lothersdale. He was still pursuing these investigations when he read in the _Morning Mail_:--