"Well, like a stuffed frog, then--it's all the same to me. It's perfect rot. If I'm walking with Kennedy, you stalk past as if we'd both got the plague or something. And if I'm with you, Kennedy suddenly remembers an appointment, and dashes off at a gallop in the opposite direction. If I had to award the bronze medal for drivelling lunacy in this place, you would get it by a narrow margin, and Kennedy would be _proxime_, and honourably mentioned. Silly idiots!" "Don't stop, Jimmy. Keep it up," said Fenn, settling himself in his chair. The dialogue was taking place in Silver's study. "My dear chap, you didn't think I'd finished, surely! I was only trying to find some description that would suit you. But it's no good. I can't. Look here, take my advice--the advice," he added, in the melodramatic voice he was in the habit of using whenever he wished to conceal the fact that he was speaking seriously, "of an old man who wishes ye both well. Go to Kennedy, fling yourself on his chest, and say, 'We have done those things which we ought not to have done--' No. As you were! Compn'y, 'shun! Say 'J. Silver says that I am a rotter. I am a worm. I have made an ass of myself. But I will be good. Shake, pard!' That's what you've got to do. Come in." And in had come Kennedy. The attractions of Kay's were small, and he usually looked in on Jimmy Silver in the afternoons. "Oh, sorry," he said, as he saw Fenn. "I thought you were alone, Jimmy." "I was just going," said Fenn, politely. "Oh, don't let me disturb you," protested Kennedy, with winning courtesy. "Not at all," said Fenn. "Oh, if you really were--" "Oh, yes, really." "Get out, then," growled Jimmy, who had been listening in speechless disgust to the beautifully polite conversation just recorded. "I'll forward that bronze medal to you, Fenn." And as the door closed he had turned to rend Kennedy as he had rent Fenn; while Fenn walked back to Kay's feeling that there was a good deal in what Jimmy had said. So that when he went down town that afternoon in search of his cap, he pondered as he walked over the advisability of making a fresh start. It would not be a bad idea. But first he must concentrate his energies on recovering what he had lost. He found the house in the High Street without a great deal of difficulty, for he had marked the spot carefully as far as that had been possible in the fog. The door was opened to him, not by the old man with whom he had exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an inquiring look. To Fenn it seemed merely menacing. "Wodyer want?" he asked, abruptly.