“He must have been a bit of a coward. If he wanted so desperately to collect those filthy facts, why didn’t he collect them?” “Bad luck--nothing else. He went as far as he could. But he was no seasoned traveller, you know. He just came to grief, as any man might, there in the wilderness. The stars in their courses--and so forth. He didn’t get so far west as he had meant to. Men went back on him, maps turned out incorrect, supplies failed awkwardly, everything happened that can happen. Then his interpreter died--his one absolutely trustworthy man--and the whole game was up. He lost his head; he believed his eyes; he believed lying natives. They made game of him, I dare say, in some grim, neolithic way. They said anything and everything about marriage customs--quite different things from group to group. He had bad luck with his own men--half a dozen of them died of dysentery or something--and he had to recruit on the spot. Why on earth should they tell him the truth? It was more fun not to. And, of course, now and then he pushed into some corner where the only use they had for him was to eat him. From those places he had to withdraw speedily. It’s not an anthropologist’s business to get killed unless he can be sure of getting his note-books home. He’s more like a spy, apparently, than a soldier. “After eight or ten beastly months, despair was reeking round him like a mist. I think he said that, himself. His mind tried to peer out through it. He got nothing but a jumble of reports from those aborigines. Time after time they’d promise to let him in on some rite, and then their faces would be shamelessly blank when he kept his appointment. They said nothing that wasn’t carefully contradicted. Certain things he did get hold of, of course. Paramore swore to me that a good bit of his book was true as truth--but not enough to prove anything, to found theories on. About three of the note-books were genuine, but they made nothing coherent, he said. He put everything down, always intending to check and sift later.” I may have looked a little bored, for Hoyting suddenly interrupted his narrative. “I’m telling you all this,” he said, “because it’s essential that you should know everything you can know about it. The thing’s going to be in your hands, and the more information you have the better. I’m not dragging you through this biography because I think it’s beautiful. I can see you loathe it all. Well ... if only you stay-at-home people would realize how much luck counts! You don’t dream of the mad dance of incalculable forces. What you really hate Paramore for is his having luck against him.” “No,” I protested stiffly; “for lying.”