All the same I was rather low about my job. Barring the episode
of the ransacking of my effects the first night, I had not a suspicion
of a clue or a hint of any mystery. The place and the people were as
open and bright as a Y.M.C.A. hut. But one day I got a solid wad
of comfort. In a corner of Letchford's paper, the _Critic, I found a
letter which was one of the steepest pieces of invective I had ever
met with. The writer gave tongue like a beagle pup about the
prostitution, as he called it, of American republicanism to the vices
of European aristocracies. He declared that Senator La Follette was
a much-misunderstood patriot, seeing that he alone spoke for the
toiling millions who had no other friend. He was mad with President
Wilson, and he prophesied a great awakening when Uncle
Sam got up against John Bull in Europe and found out the kind of
standpatter he was. The letter was signed 'John S. Blenkiron' and
dated 'London, 3 July-'

The thought that Blenkiron was in England put a new
complexion on my business. I reckoned I would see him soon, for he
wasn't the man to stand still in his tracks. He had taken up the role
he had played before he left in December 1915, and very right too,
for not more than half a dozen people knew of the Erzerum affair,
and to the British public he was only the man who had been fired
out of the Savoy for talking treason. I had felt a bit lonely before,
but now somewhere within the four corners of the island the best
companion God ever made was writing nonsense with his tongue
in his old cheek.

There was an institution in Biggleswick which deserves mention.
On the south of the common, near the station, stood a red-brick
building called the Moot Hall, which was a kind of church for the