He was thankful that he was going home next day to his orderly life.
II Eighteen years have gone, and the lanky figure of Speed's store is revealed in new surroundings.

In a big square room two men sat beside a table littered with the debris of pens, foolscap, and torn fragments of paper which marked the end of a Council.

It was an evening at the beginning of April, and a fire burned in the big grate.

One of the two sat at the table with his elbows on the mahogany, and his head supported by a hand.

He was a man well on in middle life with a fine clean-cut face and the shapely mobile lips of the publicist and orator.