Whether Mr. Denman had shown his album to Bellairs, whether, indeed, Bellairs could have caught (as I did) this hint from an obliterated postmark, I shall never know, and it mattered not.  We were equal now; my task at Stallbridge-le-Carthew was accomplished; my interest in postage-stamps died shamelessly away; the astonished Denman was bowed out; and ordering the horse to be put in, I plunged into the study of the time-table.

CHAPTER XXI.  FACE TO FACE.

I fell from the skies on Barbizon about two o’clock of a September afternoon.  It is the dead hour of the day; all the workers have gone painting, all the idlers strolling, in the forest or the plain; the winding causewayed street is solitary, and the inn deserted.  I was the more pleased to find one of my old companions in the dining-room; his town clothes marked him for a man in the act of departure; and indeed his portmanteau lay beside him on the floor.

“Why, Stennis,” I cried, “you’re the last man I expected to find here.”

“You won’t find me here long,” he replied.  “King Pandion he is dead; all his friends are lapped in lead.  For men of our antiquity, the poor old shop is played out.”

“I have had playmates, I have had companions,” I quoted in return.  We were both moved, I think, to meet again in this scene of our old pleasure parties so unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both already so much altered.

“That is the sentiment,” he replied.  “All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.  I have been here a week, and the only living creature who seemed to recollect me was the Pharaon.  Bar the Sirons, of course, and the perennial Bodmer.”

“Is there no survivor?” I inquired.

“Of our geological epoch? not one,” he replied.  “This is the city of Petra in Edom.”

“And what sort of Bedouins encamp among the ruins?” I asked.

“Youth, Dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth,” he returned.  “Such a gang, such reptiles! to think we were like that!  I wonder Siron didn’t sweep us from his premises.”

“Perhaps we weren’t so bad,” I suggested.

“Don’t let me depress you,” said he.  “We were both Anglo-Saxons, anyway, and the only redeeming feature to-day is another.”

The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived in my mind.  “Who is he?” I cried.  “Tell me about him.”

“What, the Redeeming Feature?” said he.  “Well, he’s a very pleasing creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing.  He is very British, though, the artless Briton!  Perhaps you’ll find him too much so for the transatlantic nerves.  Come to think of it, on the other hand, you ought to get on famously.  He is an admirer of your great republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and sedulously reads a lot of American papers.  I warned you he was artless.”