"Keep it, my boy. You may need it all. You never know what may happen when you get abroad. If you'll take my advice you'll always carry a good supply in a belt next your skin when you're campaigning. I'll find you a horse up to all your requirements. You want height and bone and muscle for a charger on campaign. Beauty Is a fifth consideration. Your life may depend upon your horse." "There is no doubt about our going, then, sir?" asked the boy, with a sparkle in his eyes. "No doubt, I'm afraid, my boy; but their plans are very undecided. I was speaking with Clarendon only last night, and, as far as I can make out, what our Government would like would be to coerce Russia by making a demonstration in force, and the Tsar is much too pig-headed for that--as they would know if they knew him as well as I do." "You know him, sir? "I was ambassador there for nearly ten years, and in ten years one learns a man fairly well. He is an unusually strong-willed and determined man, bigoted too, and believes absolutely in his mission----" "What is that, sir?" "Oh--briefly--to conquer the world on the lines laid down by his ancestor, Peter the Great. But the man who sets out to conquer the world always finds his Waterloo sooner or later." And Jim went home that night feeling very much less under a cloud on his own account, and not unhopeful on Seth's. For this new old friend of his impressed him deeply as one who knew a great deal more than most people, and as the kind of man who, if he took a matter up, would not rest till he attained his end. But as for Kattie, if she had indeed come to London, he had nothing but fears. CHAPTER XXXIX OLD SETH GOES HOME Old Seth had a heart-breaking time of it. To all intents and purposes he found himself in a foreign country. He wandered bewilderedly here and there, thinking that where the crowds were thickest there would be most chance of finding her he sought. But, to his amazement, the crowds seemed equally thick wherever he went, and every single person seemed to him to be hurrying for his or her life on business that did not admit of a moment's delay. He lost himself regularly every day. From the moment he loosed from his quiet little harbour of refuge in the morning, till, by means of the address on his card, he found himself eventually and miraculously piloted back there by a 'series of top-hatted policemen, he was simply tossing to and fro on the swirling waves of the mighty whirlpool, without the slightest knowledge of where he was, except that he was in London, and Kattie was somewhere in London too.