“You take me too literally,” he said.  “I spoke metaphorically.  I did not mean that, like Swedenborg and Mohammed, I have made excursions to Paradise.  I merely meant that I once spent ten years of such serene happiness as it seldom falls to the lot of man to enjoy.  But to return to our subject.  You would like to know more of my past; but as it would not be satisfactory to tell you an incomplete history, and to tell you all—­Yet why not?  I have done nothing that I am ashamed of; and it is well you should know something of the man whose life you have saved once, and may possibly save again.  You are trustworthy, straightforward, and vigilant, and albeit you are not overburdened with intelligence—­”

Here Mr. Fortescue paused, as if to reflect; and, though the observation was not very flattering—­hardly civil, indeed—­I was so anxious to hear this story that I took it in good part, and waited patiently for his decision.

“To relate it viva voce” he went on, thoughtfully, “would be troublesome to both of us.”

“I am sure I should find it anything but troublesome.”

“Well, I should.  It would take too much time, and I hate travelling over old ground.  But that is a difficulty which I think we can get over.  For many years I have made a record of the principal events of my life, in the form of a personal narrative; and though I have sometimes let it run behind for a while, I have always written it up.”

“That is exactly the thing.  As you say, telling a long story is troublesome.  I can read it.”

“I am afraid not.  It is written in a sort of stenographic cipher of my own invention.”

“That is very awkward,” I said, despondently.  “I know no more of shorthand than of Sanskrit, and though I once tried to make out a cipher, the only tangible result was a splitting headache.”

“With the key, which I will give you, a little instruction and practice, you should have no difficulty in making out my cipher.  It will be an exercise for your intelligence”—­smiling.  “Will you try?”

“My very best.”

“And now for the conditions.  In the first place, you must, in stenographic phrase, ‘extend’ my notes, write out the narrative in a legible hand and good English.  If there be any blanks, I will fill them up; if you require explanations, I will give them.  Do you agree?”

“I agree.”

“The second condition is that you neither make use of the narrative for any purpose of your own, nor disclose the whole or any part of it to anybody until and unless I give you leave.  What say you?”

“I say yes.”

“The third and last condition is, that you engage to stay with me in your present capacity until it pleases me to give you your conge.  Again what say you?”

This was rather a “big order,” and very one-sided.  It bound me to remain with Mr. Fortescue for an indefinite period, yet left him at liberty to dismiss me at a moment’s notice; and if he went on living, I might have to stay at Kingscote till I was old and gray.  All the same, the position was a good one.  I had four hundred a year (the price at which I had modestly appraised my services), free quarters, a pleasant life, and lots of hunting—­all I could wish for, in fact; and what can a man have more?  So again I said, “Yes.”