WILLIE WHISPER 7 



we sat with our backs against a great tree and 

 smoked and talked. A most interesting talk it 

 was, for the strange and fascinating companion 

 that kindly fate had sent my way told me much 

 about himself. That he was a cultivated gentle- 

 man was plain to eye and ear. Many such are 

 to be met in queer corners of the world, and 

 generally the stamp of failure, sometimes also of 

 disgrace, is plainly to be seen. But this man was 

 different, and I had wondered by what freak of 

 nature or chance of fortune one so evidently a 

 product of civihsation had become a child of the 

 woods and wilds. He told me about it in some- 

 thing like the following words. 



" You are quite right," he said, " I have not 

 drifted into this phase of existence through failure 

 or disgrace. I have not forged anybody's name, 

 or cheated at cards, or as a wastrel made myself 

 a hopeless misery to my friends. Nor is there 

 any woman in my story. I adopted this kind of 

 life of my own free will, though not without many 

 struggles against it, because it seemed to me the 

 only thing I could do. I am an Irishman, which 

 perhaps accounts for something, and a younger son 

 of a politically powerful family, which certainly 

 accounts for much more. I was at Harrow and 



