strand of his pale hair. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Orde. These 'jumpers' ...
and that confounded mixed stuff from _seventeen_ ..." he trailed off, his
eye glazing in the abstraction of some inner calculation, his long,
nervous fingers reaching unconsciously toward the soiled memoranda left
by Mason.

"Well, I'll set you to work," he roused himself, when he perceived that
the two were about to leave him. And almost before they had time to turn
away he was busy at the papers, his pencil, beautifully pointed, running
like lightning down the long columns, pausing at certain places as
though by instinct, hovering the brief instant necessary to calculation,
then racing on as though in pursuit of something elusive.

As they turned away a slow, cool voice addressed them from behind the
stove.

"Hullo, bub!" it drawled.

Fox's face lighted and he extended both hands.

"Well, Tally!" he cried. "You old snoozer!"

The man was upward of sixty years of age, but straight and active. His
features were tanned a deep mahogany, and carved by the years and
exposure into lines of capability and good humour. In contrast to this
brown his sweeping white moustache and bushy eyebrows, blenched flaxen
by the sun, showed strongly. His little blue eyes twinkled, and fine
wrinkles at their corners helped the twinkles. His long figure was so
heavily clothed as to be concealed from any surmise, except that it was
gaunt and wiry. Hands gnarled, twisted, veined, brown, seemed less like