“And he talks of this Bardur?”
“A good deal. He is an expert in his way on the matter and uncommonly clever. He kept the best things out of the book, and it would be worth your while meeting him. Do you happen to know him?”
“No—o,” said the great man doubtfully. “Oh, stop a moment. I have heard my young brother talk of somebody of the same name. Rather a figure at Oxford, wasn’t he?”
Wratislaw nodded. “But to talk of Marka,” he added.
“His mission is, of course, official, and he has abundant resources.”
“So much I gathered,” said Wratislaw. “But his designs?
“He knows the tribes in the North better than any living man, but without a base at hand he is comparatively harmless. The devil in the thing is that we do not know how close that base may be. Fifty thousand men may be massed within fifty miles, and we are in ignorance.”
“It is the lack of a secret service,” said the other. “Had we that, there are a hundred young men who would have risked their necks there and kept us abreast of our enemies. As it is, we have to wait till news comes by some roundabout channel, while that cheerful being, Marka, keeps the public easy by news of hypothetical private expeditious.”
“And meantime there is that thousand-mile piece of desert of which we know nothing, and where our friends may be playing pranks as they please. Well, well, we must wait on developments. It is the last refuge of the ill-informed. What about the dissolution? You are safe, I suppose?”
Wratislaw nodded.