"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Medley.

I recognised the handwriting. The letter, which bore a Devonshire
postmark, was from an artist friend of mine, one Lickford, who was at
present on a sketching tour in the west. I had seen him off at
Waterloo a week before, and I remember that I had walked away from the
station wishing that I could summon up the energy to pack and get off
to the country somewhere. I hate London in July.

The letter was a long one, but it was the postscript which interested
me most.


" . . . By the way, at Yeovil I ran into an old friend of ours,
Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, of all people. As large as life--
quite six foot two, and tremendously filled out. I thought he was
abroad. The last I heard of him was that he had started for Buenos
Ayres in a cattle ship, with a borrowed pipe by way of luggage. It
seems he has been in England for some time. I met him in the
refreshment-room at Yeovil Station. I was waiting for a down train; he
had changed on his way to town. As I opened the door, I heard a huge
voice entreating the lady behind the bar to 'put it in a pewter'; and
there was S. F. U. in a villainous old suit of grey flannels (I'll
swear it was the one he had on last time I saw him) with pince-nez
tacked on to his ears with ginger-beer wire as usual, and a couple of
inches of bare neck showing between the bottom of his collar and the
top of his coat--you remember how he could never get a stud to do its
work. He also wore a mackintosh, though it was a blazing day.

"He greeted me with effusive shouts. Wouldn't hear of my standing the