Lastly, my friend, if you would know anything of the writer who has so often addressed you under an initial, you may find as much of him here as in any of his books. Here is interred part, at any rate, of the soul of the Bachelor Q, in a book which, though it tell of adventures, I would ask you not to disdain, though you be a boy no longer. An acquaintance of mine near the Land's End had a remarkably fine tree of apples—to be precise, of Cox's Orange Pippins—and one night was robbed of the whole of them. But what, think you, had the thief left behind him, at the foot of the tree? Why, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

ARTHUR T. QUILLER-COUCH.

THE HAVEN, FOWEY, October 1st, 1906.

CONTENTS

Chapter.

I. OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.

II. I RIDE ON A PILGRIMAGE.
III. I ACQUIRE A KINGDOM.
IV. LONG VACATION.
V. THE SILENT MEN.