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 The old man awoke with a start.

"And when you come to this Prohibition question," he said, "the Americans have simply become a laughing stock...."

Harkness picked up the Browning firmly. "If you don't mind," he remarked, "I have a piece of work here of some importance and I have but little time. Pray excuse me...."

How had he dared? Never in all his life had he spoken to a stranger so. How often had he envied and admired those who could be rude and indifferent to people's feelings. It seemed to him that this was a crisis with him, something that he would never forget, something that might alter all his life. Perhaps already the charm of which Maradick had spoken was working. He looked out of his window and always, afterwards, he was to remember a stream that, now bright silver, now ebony dark, ran straight to him from the heart of an emerald green field like a greeting spirit. It laughed up to his window and was gone.

He had asserted himself. The old man with the beard was reading the Hibbert Journal. Strange old man—but defeated! Harkness felt a triumph. Could he but henceforward assert himself in this