country."

Nobody took any notice of this remark.

"If Bacon was really the playwright," said Lockton, "the problem is a
very different one."

"If Bacon had written Shakespeare's plays," said Silvester, "they
wouldn't have been so bad."

"There seems to me to be only one argument," said Professor Morgan, "in
favour of the Bacon theory, and that is that the range of mind displayed
in Shakespeare's plays is so great that it would have been child's play
for the man who wrote Shakespeare's plays to have written the works of
Bacon."

"Yes," said Hall, "but because it would be child's play for the man
who wrote my plays to have written your works and those of Professor
Newcastle--which it would--it doesn't prove that you wrote my plays."

"Bacon was a philosopher," said Willmott, "and Shakespeare was a poet--a
dramatic poet; but Shakespeare was also an actor, an actor-manager, and
only an actor-manager could have written the plays."

"What do you think of the Bacon theory?" asked Faubourg of the stranger.

"I think," said the stranger, "that we shall soon have to say eggs and
Shakespeare instead of eggs and Bacon."

This remark caused a slight shudder to pass through all the guests, and