Six months passed before his eyes rested on a human being other than Quong Ho. It is true that the rate-collector, savagely cursing his luck and the bicycle-destroying track that led from the road to the farmhouse, had appeared one day with a paper showing certain indebtedness; but Quong Ho had received it and, gravely promising a cheque in payment, had dismissed the intruder. No other official came near the place. Quong Ho called weekly at the Post office and railway station, to the great relief of postman and van-driver. “Thought and money acutely applied,” remarked Baltazar, “together with freedom from the entanglement of family relationships, are the determining factors of human happiness. A man with these factors at his disposal is a fool if he cannot, fashion for himself whatever kind of existence he pleases.” But one day, a cloudless winter morning, when the sunshine kissing the frost-bound earth transmuted the myriad frondage of the heather into a valley of diamonds, Baltazar, on his way from the stable to the front door, came across a stranger leaning over the gate. He was a heavy man with a fat, clean-shaven face, loose lips and little furtive eyes. He wore a new golfing suit exaggerated in cut and aggressive in colour. He said with easy familiarity: “Good morning, Mr. Baltazar.” “Since you know my name,” replied Baltazar, with an air of courtesy, “it has doubtless struck you that this is my gate.” “Of course——” “You are leaning on it,” said Baltazar. The visitor, perplexed, straightened himself. “I’m a sort of neighbour of yours, you know. I live about seven miles off—the big property this side of Water-End: Cedar Chase—and I’ve often thought I’d run over in the Rolls-Royce as far as I could, and walk the rest, and see how you were getting along.” “That is most amiable of you,” said Baltazar, advancing to the gate and resting his arm on it with an easy suggestion of proprietorship. “You have run over, you have walked—and now you see.” Before Baltazar’s ironical gaze the stranger’s eyelids fluttered in disconcertment. “I fancied you might be lonely and might like to look in and have a game of bridge one of these days. My name’s Pillivant.” “Pillivant,” said Baltazar. “I don’t much like it, but there are doubtless worse.” “You may have heard it. Pillivant and Co., Timber Merchants. We’ve rather come to the front lately.” “Your personal initiative, I should imagine,” said Baltazar. “I don’t say as it isn’t,” replied Mr. Pillivant. “When whacking Government contracts are going, why not get ’em?” “Why not? Why waste time in doing anything else, all day long, but getting ’em?” Mr. Pillivant drew from his inner breast pocket a vast gold casket of a cigar-case, opened it and held it out towards his inhospitable host.