had a private account to settle with my conscience. I had funked the place in the foggy twilight, and it does not do to let a matter like that slide.… - John Buchan

though I was afraid of many things, the thing I feared most mortally was being afraid. I

A man’s courage is like a horse that refuses a fence; you have got to take him by the head and cram him at it again. If you don’t, he will funk worse next time. I hadn’t enough courage to be able to take chances with it, though I was afraid of many things, the thing I feared most was being afraid.

Russia is mortally sick and therefore all evil is unchained, and the criminals have no one to check them. There is crime everywhere in the world, and the unfettered crime in Russia is so powerful that it stretches its hand to crime throughout the globe and there is a great mobilizing everywhere of wicked men. Once you boasted that law was international and that the police in one land worked with the police of all others. To-day that is true about criminals. After a war evil passions are loosed, and, since Russia is broken, in her they can make their headquarters...

"How will you deal with him?" Belses asked.
Jock lifted a brawny fist and regarded it lovingly. "Knock him out — truss him up — whatever the Almighty permits us."
Supposing he's not alone?"
Oh, then, if his trusties are with him, there'll be a bonny rumpus."

All this was very loose guessing, and I don't pretend it was ingenious or scientific. I wasn't any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don't know if I can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.