And we let Sir Jacob Borrodaile find another attache.
Since all these events whose history I have set down happened I have lived a very quiet life at a small house which I have taken in the country.

The ordinary ambitions and aims of men in my position seem to me dull and unattractive.

I have little fancy for the whirl of society, and none for the jostle of politics.

Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow.

Yet I am a young man; and sometimes I have a fancy--the superstitious would call it a presentiment--that my part in life is not yet altogether played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs, I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my enemies', brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows.
Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander through the woods or by the side of the stream.