'What do you mean?' said Keller. 'If you're enough of a Britisher to throw this thing away, I shan't. I thought you were a newspaper-man.' 'I am. That's why I know. Don't be an ass, Keller. Remember, I'm seven hundred years your senior, and what your grandchildren may learn five hundred years hence, I learned from my grandfathers about five hundred years ago. You won't do it, because you can't.' This conversation was held in open sea, where everything seems possible, some hundred miles from Southampton. We passed the Needles Light at dawn, and the lifting day showed the stucco villas on the green and the awful orderliness of England--line upon line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier. We waited an hour in the Customs shed, and there was ample time for the effect to soak in. 'Now, Keller, you face the music. The _Havel_ goes out to-day. Mail by her, and I'll take you to the telegraph-office,' I said. I heard Keller gasp as the influence of the land closed about him, cowing him as they say Newmarket Heath cows a young horse unused to open courses. 'I want to retouch my stuff. Suppose we wait till we get to London?' he said. Zuyland, by the way, had torn up his account and thrown it overboard that morning early. His reasons were my reasons. In the train Keller began to revise his copy, and every time that he looked at the trim little fields, the red villas, and the embankments of the line, the blue pencil plunged remorselessly through the slips. He appeared to have dredged the dictionary for adjectives. I could think of none that he had not used. Yet he was a perfectly sound poker-player and never showed more cards than were sufficient to take the pool. 'Aren't you going to leave him a single bellow?' I asked sympathetically. 'Remember, everything goes in the States, from a trouser-button to a double-eagle.' 'That's just the curse of it,' said Keller below his breath. 'We've played 'em for suckers so often that when it comes to the golden truth--I'd like to try this on a London paper. You have first call there, though.' 'Not in the least. I'm not touching the thing in our papers. I shall be happy to leave 'em all to you; but surely you'll cable it home?' 'No. Not if I can make the scoop here and see the Britishers sit up.' 'You won't do it with three columns of slushy headline, believe me. They don't sit up as quickly as some people.' 'I'm beginning to think that too. Does _nothing_ make any difference in this country?' he said, looking out of the window. 'How old is that farmhouse?' 'New. It can't be more than two hundred years at the most.' 'Urn. Fields, too?' 'That hedge there must have been clipped for about eighty years.' 'Labour cheap--eh?' 'Pretty much. Well, I suppose you'd like to try the _Times_, wouldn't you?'