“If I thought I could be of any use to you . . .,” I began, with temperate enthusiasm; but Hornbeck shook his head and nodded meaningly towards the men at the far end of the table. “I’ve already more than I know what to do with,” he murmured ruefully. “_You_ don’t _need_ a job, but most of these fellows do; and it’ll be harder for them to find one than for you. The war was the opportunity of a lifetime for most of them; but when it’s a question of conventional, peace-time billets . . .” Hornbeck shrugged his shoulders and looked with mingled pride and amusement at the flock which he had collected. There were men and women, married and single, old and young; drawn from a dozen different professions, they were alike in nothing but their admitted ignorance of civil-service ways. And, in the hands of Hornbeck, this ignorance had been converted into an asset. As the department is dead, I can praise it—without offence—for loyalty, hard work and efficiency such as I have never seen excelled; without offence, too, I hope, I can say that we were the strangest collection of government officials that one man ever assembled below one roof. The war, if it did nothing else, gave scope to our versatility. At this dinner I recollect that Bellamy, the actor, sat next to Clayton, the paper-manufacturer. On his other side was Whitburn, the chancery silk; and, beyond him, old Norton, the banker. Next to him sat my private slave and fact-finder, Spence-Atkins, who had reached manhood as a traveller in Manchester goods and, on being discharged for neglect of business, had drifted about the world, collecting figures and languages. Next to him, again, was Jefferson Wright, who began the war as a mathematical coach, lost a hand at Neuve Chapelle, formed the statistical branch of the Purchase-and-Supply Department, seconded himself to the Admiralty and ended mysteriously as a brigadier on the pay-roll of the Ministry of Labour. “It takes all kinds to make an intelligence department,” I said. “I wish I could find something for them to do now,” answered Hornbeck; and I remember his words as the first hint of the human dislocation that would come as the country declared itself in a state of peace. In the meantime, our conversation at this dinner strengthened my feeling that I could do no good by remaining in England at present; and I had excellent private reasons for wishing to go abroad and to keep my wife abroad. Until conditions were normal, we did not even know where to live. Most of my income was derived from Ireland: sentiment and duty required that I should spend part of my time there as soon as the country was habitable; and, now that my sister was married and my mother had made her home in the south of France, Barbara might well grasp at the chance of escaping from England. “Quite deliberately, I feel as if I never wanted to go back,” she announced next day, as we watched the white cliffs of Dover fading from view.