CHAPTER IV 



AN ADVENTURER 



In one of the new cottages at the edge of the town 

 beyond lives, or tries to live, a man who fought for many 

 years in one of the suburbs a losing battle against London. 

 His father had farmed land now covered by streets. He 

 himself was persuaded to sell all but his house and garden 

 to raise money for a business which promised his sons 

 great wealth. He retained barely enough to live upon; 

 the business, an honest one, failed; and in a short time 

 misfortunes compelled him to open a shop. He con- 

 verted the house — that was once a farmhouse — into a 

 shop, and not five years ago it could still be seen at the 

 end of a row of gaudy, glittering windows, itself a village 

 shop, having but a common house window for the display 

 of wares, the interior gloomy and approached through a 

 Strip of garden where a lime-tree put on and shed its 

 leaves with the air of a princess of old romance. The 

 back garden, half an orchard, was bordered along a side 

 street by a high wall, and over that a broad cherry used 

 to lean a gnarled branch and shower its blossoms upon 

 the asphalte; the foot-passengers complained of the tree 

 which had grown without foreknowledge of the fact that 

 men would pass below in silk hats, and the branch was 

 lopped. In the shop itself everything was for sale, 

 everything that officious travellers could foist upon the 

 little weak-eyed half- farmer, half-gardener who kept the 



