"My heart's all right, and I am prepared for anything," Underhill
surrendered, as he reached up and touched the innocent looking rusty
old cannon-ball, whose only peculiarity seemed to be its willingness
to remain where it was without any visible means of support.

The room was suddenly filled with a greenish light, as if someone had
just taken a flash-light photograph. Underhill was thrown violently
back into his chair, and the ball crashed down on the table, splitting
it from end to end.

Without moving a muscle of his face, and taking no notice of the
gestures of pain made by Underhill as he sat rubbing his arm and
shoulder, Edestone resumed:

"Mr. Underhill, I will not take any more of your valuable time to show
you my drawings and photographs, but I beg you to say to Sir Egbert
Graves that you do not think with Lord Rockstone that the American
Secretary of State has been deceived, and that you hope he will, when
he sees me tomorrow, try to forget for a while that he is an
Englishman and be a little bit human. You know, Underhill, confidence
and pigheadedness are not even connected by marriage; much less are
they blood relations. By Jove," he grinned, "you can tell him I'll
stick him up against the ceiling if he insists upon handling me with
the ice tongs and leave him there until you take him down; that is, if
you care to take another little shock."

Underhill, although he might have thought at another time that it was
his duty to resent such light and frivolous reference to the heads of
His Majesty's Government, was now, however, occupied with more serious