Miles Furley, the host, to demonstrate the fact that this was the
temporary abode of a visitor to the Blakeney marshes in search of
sport.

Furley, broad-shouldered, florid, with tanned skin and grizzled
hair, was still wearing the high sea boots and jersey of the duck
shooter. His companion, on the other hand, a tall, slim man, with
high forehead, clear eyes, stubborn jaw, and straight yet
sensitive mouth, wore the ordinary dinner clothes of civilisation.
The contrast between the two men might indeed have afforded some
ground for speculation as to the nature of their intimacy.
Furley, a son of the people, had the air of cultivating, even
clinging to a certain plebeian strain, never so apparent as when
he spoke, or in his gestures. He was a Member of Parliament for a
Labour constituency, a shrewd and valuable exponent of the gospel
of the working man. What he lacked in the higher qualities of
oratory he made up in sturdy common sense. The will-o'-the-wisp
Socialism of the moment, with its many attendant "isms" and
theories, received scant favour at his hands. He represented the
solid element in British Labour politics, and it was well known
that he had refused a seat in the Cabinet in order to preserve an
absolute independence. He had a remarkable gift of taciturnity,
which in a man of his class made for strength, and it was
concerning him that the Prime Minister had made his famous
epigram, that Furley was the Labour man whom he feared the most
and dreaded the least.

Julian Orden, with an exterior more promising in many respects
than that of his friend, could boast of no similar distinctions.
He was the youngest son of a particularly fatuous peer resident in