It is indeed a more difficult matter when one is less of an inventor, than a painstaking recorder of facts.

When our characters are conventionally attired in trousers of the latest fashion, and ransacking mythology the oath-makers can accept no god worthier of witness than High Jove.

Greatest of all disabilities consider this fact: that the scene must be laid in Brockley, S.E., a respectable suburb of London, and you realize the apparent hopelessness of the self-imposed task of the writer who would weave romance from such unpromising material.

It would indeed seem well-nigh hopeless to extract the exact proportions of tragedy and farce from Kymott Crescent that go to make your true comedy, were it not for the intervention of the Duke, of Hank, his friend, of Mr. Roderick Nape, of Big Bill Slewer of Four Ways, Texas, and last, but by no means least, Miss Alicia Terrill of "The Ferns," 66, Kymott Crescent.

Contents

PART I

[THE DUKE ARRIVES]

PART II

[THE DUKE DEPARTS]

PART III