I have been casting up possibilities all day, and this one is too clever, another too dull, another too timid, and another too hare-brained." Wratislaw seemed sunk in a brown study.
"Do you remember my telling you once about my friend Lewis Haystoun ?" he asked.
"I remember perfectly.

What made him get so badly beaten?
He ought to have won." "That's part of my point," said the other.

"If I knew him less well than I do I should say he was the man cut out by Providence for the work.

He has been to the place, he knows the ropes of travelling, he is exceedingly well-informed, and he is uncommonly clever.

But he is badly off colour.