"We're getting on by degrees," said the Secretary in the train, as he lit a cigar to counteract the atmosphere. "It's amazing what an amount of pig-headedness there is in the world," said his friend. "You don't realise it in all its heart-breaking stolidity till you run your own head against it." "That's so. But what can you expect when men like B---- are pitchforked into the positions they occupy? I was at Eton with B---- and at Oxford. He always was a fool and he always will be. He ought to have gone into the Church." "I object! The Church needs the very best men it can get." "Well, then, into the Army. He couldn't have done much mischief in either, and in the Army, at all events, there'd have been some chance of his getting licked into some kind of shape. As it is, I always want to get up and ask him to come outside into the park with me just for ten minutes or so. It was the one argument that used to prevail with him, and I've an idea it would yet. Anyway, it would do _me_ a heap of good. He was born pig-headed and it's grown on him ever since." "If we can once get him to see things as----" "See? B---- never could see anything beyond the side on which his bread was buttered. Some men are born dense, and some grow denser as they grow older. B----'s both. He wants trepanning. Here's Mark Lane, and there's your Angel Gabriel on the pounce for us." Angel Gabriel, in the person of Kenneth Blair, gave them hearty welcome, and piloted them through slums and dockyards till they stood on the deck of the _Torch_, where Jean, and Aunt Jannet Harvey, and Captain Cathie, were already doing the honours to a goodly company. "It is a great enterprise you are bound upon, Mrs. Blair," said the Secretary, as Jean expounded _Torch_ to him. "The grandest work in the world," she said exuberantly. "If you'll only back us up and give us what we want." "Ah! if only it rested with me. But I'm only one." "Oh, come! Where am I?" asked Selsea. "That makes two," acknowledged the Secretary, who would willingly, in the light of Jean's brown eyes, have taken all the credit to himself. "And we'll soon have the rest. As for B----, if he won't toe the line, we'll worry the life out of him," which was a highly improper remark to fall from the lips of a philanthropic nobleman. But then Jean Blair's hopefully eager face and wistful eyes were upon him, and allowances must be made. "I do hope you will," she said earnestly. "What, worry the life out of him?" laughed the Secretary. "H'm--yes,--if he won't toe the line." "Hullo!" said the Secretary, as he entered the deck saloon, an exceedingly comfortable room, fitted in bird's-eye maple with fine woven cane cushions and backs to the seats instead of saddlebags or velvet plush. But it was not at the room itself at which he exclaimed, but at the arm-racks ranged round the walls, empty at present, but full of meaning.