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 owner, not the public. Verily, Wilton Sargent had hoisted the striped flag of rebellion!

"Is n't it time that the humour of the situation began to strike you, Wilton?" I asked.

"Where's the humour of baiting an American citizen just because he happens to be a millionaire—poor devil." He was silent for a little time, and then went on: "Of course. Now I see!" He spun round and faced me excitedly. "It 's as plain as mud. These ducks are laying their pipes to skin me."

"They say explicitly they don't want money!"

"That 's all a blind. So 's their addressing me as W. Sargent. They know well enough who I am. They know I 'm the old man's son. Why did n't I think of that before?"

"One minute, Wilton. If you climbed to the top of the dome of St. Paul's and offered a reward to any Englishman who could tell you who or what Merton Sargent had been, there would n't be twenty men in all London to claim it."

"That 's their insular provincialism, then. I don't care a cent. The old man would have wrecked the Great Buchonian before breakfast for a pipe-opener. My God, I 'll do it in dead earnest! I 'll show 'em that they can't bulldoze a foreigner for flagging one of their little tin-pot trains, and—I 've spent fifty thousand a year here, at least, for the last four years."

I was glad I was not his lawyer. I re-read the correspondence, notably the letter which recommended him—almost tenderly, I fancied—to build a fourteen-foot brick wall at the end of his garden, and half-way