When Quong Ho, a week afterwards, brought him his meagre mail, he angrily crushed in his fist and threw aside the enclosure of the first envelope which he had opened. “I’m hanged if this isn’t a begging circular! It’s infernal impudence! It’s an intolerable outrage on one’s personal liberty. Here, Quong Ho!”—he swept the remainder of the mail into the Chinaman’s hand. “Don’t let me be worried with any more letters. I’ve come down here to be quiet and not to be badgered. If there are bills to pay, make out the cheques and I’ll sign them. If there are circulars, throw them away. About anything else use your discretion.” “I will exactly execute your orders,” replied Quong Ho. Thus Baltazar finally severed relations between himself and the outside world. Quong Ho acted the perfect Private Secretary. The only letters presented to his master for perusal were rare business communications from booksellers instructed to purchase some out-of-the-way and possibly expensive book. Circular letters, containing appeals for subscriptions, which poured in, as soon as Baltazar’s name eventually found its way on the address-lists of the neighbourhood, Quong Ho conscientiously destroyed. Using his discretion, he withheld letters from the Bank inviting investments in War Loans. Such, in his opinion, were further intrusions on the sacred privacy of his master. And thus the weeks and months passed by; and Quong Ho, in touch with even such an outpost of civilization as the tiny moorland town and bringing to that contact the most highly trained incuriosity, could not avoid gathering the current tidings of the vast world conflict; but, faithful to his commands, he said never a word to Baltazar, gave never a hint of the stupendous convulsion in which the world was involved. And while his master, serene doctrinaire, discoursed on the political science of the nineties, now being blown to smithereens by German guns, he maintained the reverential attitude of the disciple, drinking in as gospel truth the wisdom of his inspired teacher. One evening, when Baltazar had praised the clear solution of certain problems which he had set in Differential Equations, and prophesied a glorious career for the most brilliant mathematician China had ever produced, Quong Ho, after gratefully acknowledging the encomium, said: “If you will forgive my indiscretion, I should like to ask a question. Why is it, sir, that you, who take such great interest in the future—for example, my inconsiderable and negligible prospects, and the benefits that will accrue to humanity on the publication of the thought-shaking results of your own profound researches,—should be so indifferent to the present condition of the world?”