Godfrey always calls my parties menageries, and my guests natives. Lady Moyne and her husband, who sometimes comes with her, are not counted as natives. Nor am I. Nor is Marion. Nor is Godfrey himself. This illustrates the working of Godfrey's mind. As a matter of fact the Moynes and my own family are about the only people of social importance in the locality who ought to be called natives. My other guests are all strangers, officials of one kind or another, stipendiary magistrates, police officers, bank managers, doctors, clergymen and others whom an unkind fate has temporarily stranded in our neighbourhood; who all look forward to an escape from their exile and a period of leisure retirement in the suburbs of Dublin. Godfrey left me, and I went on fidgetting with my papers until luncheon-time. Marion and I were just finishing luncheon when Godfrey came in again. "Well," I said, "have you captured your millionaire?" "He wasn't on board," said Godfrey. "There were two men there, Power, who's Conroy's secretary, and a horrid bounder called McNeice. They were drinking bottled stout in the cabin with Crossan." "Under those circumstances," I said, "you did not, I suppose, leave my cards." Godfrey has a standing feud with Crossan, who is not a gentleman and does not pretend to be. Godfrey, judged by any rational standard, is even less of a gentleman; but as the future Lord Kilmore he belongs to the ranks of an aristocracy and therefore has a contempt for Crossan. The two come into very frequent contact and quite as frequent conflict. Crossan manages the co-operative store which I started, and Godfrey regards him as one of my servants. Crossan, who has a fine instinct for business, also manages the commercial side of our local mackerel fishing. Godfrey thinks he would manage this better than Crossan does. Their latest feud was concerned with the service of carts which take the fish from our little harbour to the nearest railway station. Crossan is politically a strong Protestant and an Orangeman of high attainment. Godfrey has no particular religion, and in politics belongs to that old-fashioned school of Conservatives who think that the lower orders ought to be respectful to their betters. Crossan having been taught the Church Catechism in his youth, admits this respect as theoretical duty; but gets out of performing it in practice by denying that Godfrey, or for the matter of that any one else, is his better. Godfrey's constant complaints about Crossan are the thorns which remind me that I must not regard my lot in life as altogether pleasant. I felt justified in assuming that Godfrey had not left my cards on men who degraded themselves so far as to drink bottled stout in company with Crossan.