but this impulse he overcame. Ever and again he turned in his saddle,

and looked back at the smoke.



"Spiders," he muttered over and over again. "Spiders! Well, well. . . .

The next time I must spin a web."





4. THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT



He sits not a dozen yards away. If I glance over my shoulder

I can see him. And if I catch his eye--and usually I catch his eye--

it meets me with an expression.



It is mainly an imploring look--and yet with suspicion in it.



Confound his suspicion! If I wanted to tell on him I should have told

long ago. I don't tell and I don't tell, and he ought to feel at his

ease. As if anything so gross and fat as he could feel at ease! Who

would believe me if I did tell?



Poor old Pyecraft! Great, uneasy jelly of substance! The fattest

clubman in London.



He sits at one of the little club tables in the huge bay by the fire,

stuffing. What is he stuffing? I glance judiciously and catch him

biting at a round of hot buttered tea-cake, with his eyes on me.

Confound him!--with his eyes on me!



That settles it, Pyecraft! Since you WILL be abject, since you WILL

behave as though I was not a man of honour, here, right under your

embedded eyes, I write the thing down--the plain truth about Pyecraft.

The man I helped, the man I shielded, and who has requited me

by making my club unendurable, absolutely unendurable, with his

liquid appeal, with the perpetual "don't tell" of his looks.



And, besides, why does he keep on eternally eating?



Well, here goes for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth!



Pyecraft--. I made the acquaintance of Pyecraft in this very smoking-

room. I was a young, nervous new member, and he saw it. I was sitting

all alone, wishing I knew more of the members, and suddenly he came,

a great rolling front of chins and abdomina, towards me, and grunted

and sat down in a chair close by me and wheezed for a space,

and scraped for a space with a match and lit a cigar, and then

addressed me. I forget what he said--something about the matches

not lighting properly, and afterwards as he talked he kept stopping

the waiters one by one as they went by, and telling them about

the matches in that thin, fluty voice he has. But, anyhow, it was



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