She obeyed him. Women sometimes do it still. They stood in the gaily lighted saloon, and witnessed the rush for the deck—a humiliating sight.

When at length the stairs were clear, Skeen turned and looked into her face. Then suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her. They had been drifting towards this for some weeks past. Circumstances had hurried it on. That was all.

"Dear," he said, "will you stay here while I go on deck and see what chances there are? If you once get up there in the dark and the confusion, I shall lose you."

"Yes," she answered; and as she spoke there was a great crash, which threw her into his arms a second time, and made a clean sweep of the tables. They stood literally ankle-deep in wine-glasses, dessert, and plates. The Mooroo had taken the rocks. There was a rolling crash on the deck overhead, and a confused sound of shouting.

"You will stay?" cried Skeen again.

"Yes—dear."

He turned and left her there, alone.

On deck he found a crowd. The passengers were being allowed to go to the boats. Taking into consideration the darkness, the roaring sea, and the hopelessness of it all, the organization was wonderful. The children were going first. A quarter-master stood at the head of the gangway steps and held the people in check. When Skeen arrived, Mrs. Judge Barrowby was giving this man a piece of what she was pleased to call her mind.

"Man," she was saying, "let me pass! You do not know who I am. I am the wife of Judge Barrowby."

"Marm, you may be the wife of the harkangel Gabriel as far as I knows; but I've my orders. Stand aside please. Any more babies in arms?" he cried.

But Mrs. Judge Barrowby knew the value of a good useful life, and persistently blocked up the gangway.

"One woman is as good as another," she said.

"Ay, except the mothers, and they're better," said the man, pushing her aside to let a lady and her child pass.

"THAT woman!" cried Mrs. Judge Barrowby. "A woman who has been the talk of the whole ship—before ME—a flirting grass widow!"

"Gawd knows," said the man, holding her back. "It's little enough to fight about."

"I will report you, man."

"Yes, marm, to the good God, and I ain't afraid o' HIM! NOW you may go!"

And, fuming, Mrs. Judge Barrowby went down to her death. Not one boat could reach the shore through such a surf, as captain and crew well knew; but there are certain formalities vis-a-vis to human lives which must be observed by ship-captains and doctors and others.

Skeen ran to the other side. Lights were twinkling through the spray; the land was not two hundred yards off, but it was two hundred yards of rock and surf. There was only one chance.

Skeen kicked off his boots and ran back to the saloon. It was all a matter of seconds. For a few moments the brilliant lights dazzled him, and he looked round wildly for Evelyn Crafer. A great fear seized his heart as in a grip of cold iron—but only for a moment. He saw her. She was kneeling by the table, unaware of his presence.

"Oh God," she was praying aloud, "save him—save HIM from this danger!"

He heard the words as he stopped to lift her like a child from her knees—bringing her back from God to man.

And the end of the Mooroo was a girl sitting before a driftwood fire in the cottage of the old cure of the Ile de Sein, while at her feet knelt a man with his broken arm bound to his side. And he was stroking her hands softly and repeatedly. He was trying to soothe her and make her understand that she was safe.

"Give her time, my son," the old cure said, with his deep, wise smile. "She only requires time. I have seen them before taken from the sea like her. They all require time. It is in our nature to recover from all things—in time."



IN A CARAVAN

"Which means, I think, that go or stay Affects you nothing, either way."

"And that is where Parker sleeps."

We craned our necks, and, stooping low, saw beneath the vehicle a parasitic square box like a huge barnacle fixed to the bottom of the van. A box about four feet by two. The door of it was open, and Parker's bedfellows—two iron buckets and a sack of potatoes—stood confessed.

"Oh yes—very nice," we murmured.

"Oh, it's awfully jolly!" said the host-in-himself.

We looked at Parker, who was peeling potatoes on the off-shaft— Parker, six feet two, with a soldier's bearing—and we drifted off into thought.

"And who drives?" we asked, with an intelligent interest.

"Oh, Parker. And we do all the rest, you know."

It was seven o'clock in the evening when we joined the caravan, in a stackyard on the outskirts of an Eastern county town.

"That's 'im—that's Lord George Sanger," was said of the writer by one of the crowd of small boys assembled at the stackyard gate. A travelling menagerie and circus was advertised in a somewhat "voyant" manner on the town walls, and a fancied resemblance to the aristocratic manager thereof accredited us with an honourable connection in the enterprise.

"When do you open?" inquired an intelligent spectator, anxious to show savoir faire.

"See small handbills," replied the host-in-himself, with equal courtesy.

"'Oo are yer, at any rate?" inquired an enlightened voter.

"Who are YOU?" we replied with spirit; and, passing through the gate, we closed it to keep out the draught. Then we paid a domiciliary visit, and were duly shown Parker's apartments.

In outward appearance the caravan suggested an overgrown bathing- machine. The interior resembled the cabin of a yacht. The walls were gaily decorated with painting on the panels; flowers bloomed in vases fixed upon the wall; two prettily curtained windows—one a bay, the other flat—gave a view of the surrounding country. At the forward end, against the bulkhead, so to speak, was a small but enterprising chest of drawers, and above it a large looking-glass which folded down, developed legs, and owned to the soft impeachment of being a bed. Beneath the starboard window a low and capacious sofa, combining the capacity of a locker. Under the port window was fixed a table against the bulkhead, where four people could and did dine sumptuously. When en voyage and between meals, charts, maps, and literature littered this table pleasantly. A ship's clock hung over it, and a corner cupboard did its duty in the port quarter. A heavy plush curtain closed off the kitchen and pantry, which were roomy and of marvellous capacity. Then the back door—in halves— and the back step, brassbound, treacherous.

In front there was a little verandah with supporting columns of bamboo. Here we usually sat when travelling—Parker in the right- hand corner handling the ribbons of the tandem cart-horses with skill and discretion.

As dinner was not ready, we proceeded to pitch the small tent wherein the two men were to sleep. It was a singular tent, with a vast number of pendent ropes which became entangled at the outset. We began with zeal, but presently left the ropes and turned our attention to the pegs. These required driving in with a wooden mallet and a correct eye. Persons unaccustomed to such work strike the peg on one side—the mallet goes off at a tangent and strikes the striker with force upon the shin-bone.

Finally Parker said he would put up the tent "by'n-by."

There was a Bedlington terrier—Parker's dog—attached (literally) to the caravan. He was tied to one of the bamboo columns on the forecastle, and when Parker absented himself for long he usually leaped off the platform and sought death by strangulation—this we discovered later. When we abandoned the tent we thought we would cheer up the dog.

"Don't touch him, sir; he'll bite you," said Parker.

Of course we touched him; no man who respects himself at all is ready to admit that a dog bites HIM. It was wonderful how that dog and Parker understood each other. But the bite was not serious.

At last dinner was ready, and we are prepared to take any horrid oath required that no professional cook could set before a king potatoes more mealy. This only, of all the items in the menu, is mentioned, because where potatoes are good the experienced know that other things will never be amiss.

We waited on ourselves, and placed the dirty dishes, plates, and forks upon the back step, where Parker replaced them in a few minutes, clean.

"Oh!" exclaimed the hostess-in-herself, about 10 p.m., when we were smoking the beatific pipe, "by the way—Parker's dinner!"

In response to united shouts Parker appeared, and learned with apparent surprise that he had omitted to dine. He looked pale and worn, and told us that he had been blowing out the air-beds. At eleven o'clock we two men left the ladies and went out into the cold moonlight, where our tent looked remarkably picturesque. Of course we fell over a tent-peg each, and the host lost his watchkey. Parker came forward—dining—to explain where the ropes were, and fell over one himself, losing a piece of cold boiled beef in the grass. We hunted for it with a lucifer match. Its value was enhanced by the knowledge that when the bed was shut down and had developed its legs the larder was inaccessible. After some time Parker discovered that the dog had been let loose and had found the beef some moments before. He explained that it was a singular dog and preferred to live by dishonesty. Unstolen victuals had for him no zest. He added that the loss was of no consequence, as he never had been very keen on that piece of beef. We finally retired into the tent, and left Parker still at work completing several contracts he had undertaken to carry through "by'n-by." He said he preferred doing them overnight, as it was no good getting up BEFORE five on these dark autumnal mornings.

As an interior the tent was a decided success. We went inside and hooked the flap laboriously from top to bottom. Then we remembered that the host's pyjamas were outside. He undid two hooks only and attempted to effect a sortie through the resultant interstice. He stuck. The position was undignified, and conducive to weak and futile laughter. At last Parker had to leave the washing-up of the saucepans to come to the rescue, while the dog barked and imagined that he was attending a burglary.

It was nearly midnight before we made our first acquaintance with an air-bed, and it took us until seven o'clock the next morning to get on to speaking terms with it. The air-bed, like the Bedlington terrier, must be approached with caution. Its manner is, to say the least of it, repellent. Unless the sleeper (save the mark!) lies geometrically in the centre, the air rushes to one side, and the ignorant roll off the other. If there were no bedclothes one could turn round easily, but the least movement throws the untucked blanket incontinently into space, while the instability of the bed precludes tucking in. Except for these and a few other drawbacks, the air-bed may safely be recommended.

The next morning showed a white frost on the grass, and washing in the open, in water that had stood all night in a bucket, was, to say the least of it, invigorating. Parker browned our boots, put a special edge of his own upon our razors, attended to the horses, oiled the wheels, fetched the milk, filled the lamps of the paraffin stove, bought a gallon of oil, and carried a can of water from a neighbouring farm before breakfast, just by way—he explained—of getting ready to start his day's work.

An early start had been projected, but owing to the fact that after breakfast Parker had to beat the carpet, wash the dishes, plates, cups and saucers, knives and forks, and his own face, strike the tent, let the air out of the air-beds, roll up the waterproof sheets, clean the saucepans, groom the horses, ship the shafts, send off a parcel from the station, buy two loaves of bread, and thank the owner of the stackyard—owing, I say, to the fact that Parker had these things to accomplish while we "did the rest," it was eleven o'clock before all hands were summoned to get "her" out of the narrow gateway. This was safely accomplished, by Parker, while we walked round, looked knowingly at the wheels, sternly at the gate-posts, and covertly at the spectators.

Then we clambered up, the host-in-himself cracked the whip, Parker gathered up his reins.

"Come up, Squire! Come up, Nancy!"

And the joy of the caravaneer was ours.

This joy is not like the joy of other men. For the high-road, the hedgerows, the birds, the changing sky, the ever-varying landscape, belong to the caravaneer. He sits in his moving home and is saturated with the freedom of the gipsy without the haunting memory of the police, which sits like Care on the roof of the gipsy van. Book on lap, he luxuriates on the forecastle when the sun shines and the breeze blows soft, noting idly the passing beauty of the scene, returning peaceably to the printed page. When rain comes, as it sometimes does in an English summer, he goes inside and gives a deeper attention to the book, while Parker drives and gets wet. Getting wet is one of Parker's duties. And through rain and sunshine he moves on ever, through the peaceful and never dull—the incomparable beauty of an English pastoral land. The journey is accomplished without fatigue, without anxiety; for the end of it can only be the quiet corner of a moor, or some sleepy meadow. Speed is of no account—distance immaterial. The caravaneer looks down with indifference upon the dense curiosity of the smaller towns; the larger cities he wisely avoids.

The writer occupied the humble post of brakesman—elected thereto in all humility by an overpowering majority. The duties are heavy, the glory small. A clumsy vehicle like a caravan can hardly venture down the slightest incline without a skid under the wheel and a chain round the spoke. This necessitates the frequent handling of a heavy piece of iron, which is black and greasy at the top of a hill, and red-hot at the bottom.

A steep hill through the town dispelled the Lord George Sanger illusion at one fell blow, the rustic-urban mind being incapable of conceiving that that self-named nobleman could demean himself to the laying of the skid.

Of the days that followed there remains the memory of pleasant sunny days and cool evenings, of the partridge plucked and cleaned by the roadside, fried deliciously over the paraffin flame, amidst fresh butter and mushrooms with the dew still on them. We look back with pleasure to the quiet camp in a gravel-pit on a hill-top far from the haunts of men—to the pitching of the tent by moonlight in a meadow where the mushrooms gleamed like snow, to be duly gathered for the frying-pan next morning by the host-in-himself, and in pyjamas. Nor are the sterner sides of caravan life to be forgotten- -the calamity at the brow of a steep hill, where a nasty turn made the steady old wheeler for once lose his head and his legs; the hard-fought battle over a half-side of bacon between the Bedlington terrier and the writer when that mistaken dog showed a marked preference for the stolen Wiltshire over the partridge bone of charity.

And there are pleasant recollections of friends made, and, alas! lost so soon; of the merry evening in a country house, of which the hospitable host, in his capacity of justice of the peace, gave us short shrift in the choice between the county gaol and his hospitality. Unless we consented to sleep beneath his roof and eat his salt, he vowed he would commit us for vagabonds without visible means of support. We chose the humiliation of a good dinner and a sheeted bed. The same open-handed squire hung partridges in our larder, and came with us on the forecastle to pilot us through his own intricate parish next day.

Also came the last camp and the last dinner, at which the writer distinguished himself, and the host-in-himself was at last allowed to manipulate (with accompanying lecture) a marvellous bivouac-tin containing a compound called beef a la mode, which came provided with its own spirits of wine and wick, both of which proved ineffectual to raise the temperature of the beef above a mediocre tepidity. Parker, having heard that the remains of this toothsome dish were intended for his breakfast, wisely hid it with such care that the dog stole it and consumed it, with results which cannot be dwelt upon here.

Of the vicissitudes of road travel we recollect but little. The incipient sea-sickness endured during the first day has now lost its sting; the little differences about the relative virtues of devilled partridge and beef a la mode are forgotten, and only the complete novelty, the heedless happiness of it all, remains. We did not even know the day of the week or the date; which ignorance, my masters, has a wealth of meaning nowadays.

"Date—oh, ask Parker!" we would say.

And Parker always knew.



IN THE TRACK OF THE WANDERING JEW



What hope is ours—what hope? To find no mercy After much war, and many travails done?

"Well, somebody must go; that is certain."

And more than one man looked at me. It was not because I could possibly be that somebody, although I was young enough and of little enough consequence. But Fortune had been busy with me. She had knocked all the interest out of my life, and then she had proceeded to shower her fickle favours upon me. I was by way of becoming a success in that line of life wherein I had been cast. I had been mentioned in despatches, and somehow the bullets had passed by on the other side. Her gracious Majesty had written to me twice as her dearly beloved Thomas, and I was well up in my profession.

In those days things were differently done in India. There was less telegraphing here and there for instructions. There was more action and less talk. The native gentleman did not sit on a jury then.

"Yes," said young Martello, "somebody must go. Question is—who?"

And they looked at me again.

"There be those in high places," I said, "who shall decide."

They laughed and made no answer. They were pleased to think that I should have to decide which doctor should go to Capoo, where a sickness unknown and incomprehensible had broken out. It was true that I was senior surgeon of the division; indeed, I was surgeon- major of a tract of country as big as Scotland. It is India now, but in the days of which I write the question had not been settled with a turbulent native prince. We were, in fact, settling that question.

Capoo was right in the heart of the new country, while we were in occupation of a border town. Behind us lay India; in front, the Unknown. The garrison of Capoo was small and self-important, but sickness made itself conspicuous among its members. Their doctor— poor young Barber—died, and the self-importance of the Capoo garrison oozed out of their finger-ends. They sent down post-haste to us for help, and a special letter addressed to me detailed symptoms of no human malady.

I had two men under me. The question seemed simple enough. One of them would have to go. As to which one there was really no doubt whatever. The duty fell upon Thurkow. Thurkow was junior. This might prove to be Thurkow's opportunity, or—the other thing.

We all knew that he would be willing enough to go; nay, he would be eager. But Thurkow's father was in command, which made all the difference.

While we were thinking over these things an orderly appeared at the mess-room door.

"Brigadier would like to see you, sir," he said to me. And I had to throw away the better half of a first-class manilla.

The brigadier's quarters were across a square in the centre of a long rambling palace, for which a handsome rent was duly paid. We were not making war. On the contrary, we were forcing peace down the throat of the native prince on the point of a sword.

Everything was upon a friendly footing. We were not an invading force. Oh, no! we were only the escort of a political officer. We had been quartered in this border town for more than a year, and the senior officers' lady-wives had brought their lares and penates in three bullock-carts a-piece.

I suppose we were objects of envy. We had all the excitement of novelty without any of the penalties of active warfare. We were strong enough to make an awful example of the whole Principality at a day's notice, and the Principality knew it, which kept bazaar prices down and made the coloured brother remember the hue of his cheek.

In the palace there were half a dozen officers' quarters, and these had been apportioned to the married; consequently the palace had that air of homeliness which is supposed to be lacking in the quarters of single men.

As I was crossing the square I heard some one running after me, and, turning, I faced Fitz. Fitz Marner—usually called Fitz—was my second in command and two years my junior. He was quite a different sort of man to myself, and, if I may say so, a much better man. However, I am not going to talk about myself more than I can help this time. Some day I shall, and then I shall have a portrait on the cover. This is an age of portraits. But some day the British public will wake up and will refuse to read the works of a smug- faced man in spectacles who tries to make them believe that he is doughty, fearless, and beloved of beautiful damsels. The bookstalls are full to-day of works written in the first person singular, and relating deeds of the utmost daring; while on the cover is a portrait of the author—the aforesaid smug man in spectacles—who has not the good sense to suppress himself.

Fitz was tall and lithe. He had a large brown moustache and pleasantly thoughtful eyes. His smile was the kindliest I have ever met. Moreover, a modester man than Fitz never breathed. He had a way of carrying his chin rather low, so that when he looked at one he had to raise his eyes, which imparted a pleasing suggestion of attention to his face. It always seemed to me that Fitz listened more carefully to what was said to him than other men are in the habit of doing.

"Say, doctor," he said, looking up at me in his peculiar thoughtful way, "give me a chance."

I knew what he meant. He wanted me to send him to a certain death instead of young Thurkow. Those little missions to that bourne from whence no traveller returns are all in the work of a soldier's life, and we two were soldiers, although ours was the task of repairing instead of doing the damage. Every soldier-man and most civilians know that it is sometimes the duty of a red-coat to go and get killed without pausing to ask whether it be expedient or not. One aide-de-camp may be sent on a mad attempt to get through the enemy's lines, while his colleague rides quietly to the rear with a despatch inside his tunic, the delivery of which to the commander-in-chief will ensure promotion. And in view of this the wholesome law of seniority was invented. The missions come in rotation, and according to seniority the men step forward.

Fitz Marner's place was at my side, where, by the way, I never want a better man, for his will was iron, and he had no nerves whatever. Capoo, the stricken, was calling for help. Fitz and I knew more about cholera than we cared to discuss just then. Some one must go up to Capoo to fight a hopeless fight and die. And old Fitz—God bless him!—was asking to go.

In reply I laughed.

"Not if I can help it. The fortune of war is the same for all."

Fitz tugged at his moustache and looked gravely at me.

"It is hard on the old man," he said. "It is more than you can expect."

"Much," I answered. "I gave up expecting justice some years ago. I am sorry for the brigadier, of course. He committed the terrible mistake of getting his son into his own brigade, and this is the result. All that he does to-night he does on his own responsibility. I am not inclined to help him. If it had been you, I should not have moved an inch—you know that."

He turned half away, looking up speculatively at the yellow Indian moon.

"Yes," he muttered, "I know that."

And without another word he went back to the mess-room.

I went on and entered the palace. To reach the brigadier's quarters I had to pass down the whole length of the building, and I was not in the least surprised to see Elsie Matheson waiting for me in one of the passage-like ante-rooms. Elsie Matheson was bound to come into this matter sooner or later—I knew that; but I did not quite know in what capacity her advent might be expected.

"What is this news from Capoo?" she asked, without attempting to disguise her anxiety. Her father, assistant political officer in this affair, was not at Capoo or near there. He was upstairs playing a rubber.

"Bad," I answered.

She winced, but turned no paler. Women and horses are always surprising me, and they never surprise me more than when in danger. Elsie Matheson was by no means a masculine young person. Had she been so, I should not have troubled to mention her. For me, men cannot be too manly, nor women too womanly.

"What is the illness they have?" she asked.

"I really cannot tell you, Elsie," I answered. "Old Simpson has written me a long letter—he always had a fancy for symptoms, you know—but I can make nothing of it. The symptoms he describes are quite impossible. They are too scientific for me."

"You know it is cholera," she snapped out with a strange little break in her voice which I did not like, for I was very fond of this girl.

"Perhaps it is," I answered.

She gave a funny little helpless look round her as if she wanted something to lean against.

"And who will go?" she asked. She was watching me keenly.

"Ah—that does not rest with me."

"And if it did?"

"I should go myself."

Her face lighted up suddenly. She had not thought of that. I bore her no ill-feeling, however. I did not expect her to love ME.

"But they cannot spare you," she was kind enough to say.

"Everybody can always be spared—with alacrity," I answered; "but it is not a question of that. It is a question of routine. One of the others will have to go."

"Which one?" she asked with a suddenly assumed indifference.

It was precisely the question in my own mind, but relative to a very different matter. If the decision rested with Miss Matheson, which of these two men would she send to Capoo? Perhaps I looked rather too keenly into her face, for she turned suddenly away and drew the gauzy wrap she had thrown over her evening dress more closely round her throat, for the passages were cold.

"That does not rest with me," I repeated, and I went on towards the brigadier's quarters, leaving her—a white shadow in the dimly lighted passage.

I found the chief at his own dinner-table with an untouched glass of wine before him.

"This is a bad business," he said, looking at me with haggard eyes. I had never quite realized before what an old man he was. His trim beard and moustache had been white for years, but he had always been a hale man up to his work—a fine soldier but not a great leader. There was a vein of indolence in Brigadier-General Thurkow's nature which had the same effect on his career as that caused by barnacles round a ship's keel. This inherent indolence was a steady drag on the man's life. Only one interest thoroughly aroused him—only one train of thought received the full gift of his mind. This one absorbing interest was his son Charlie, and it says much for Charlie Thurkow that we did not hate him.

The brigadier had lost his wife years before. All that belonged to ancient history—to the old Company days before our time. To say that he was absorbed in his son is to state the case in the mildest imaginable form. The love in this old man's heart for his reckless, happy-souled offspring was of that higher order which stops at nothing. There is a love that worketh wonders, and the same love can make a villain of an honest man.

I looked at old Thurkow, sitting white-lipped behind the decanter, and I knew that there was villainy in his upright, honest heart. He scarcely met my eyes. He moved uneasily in his chair. All through a long life this man had carried nobly the noblest name that can be given to any—the name of gentleman. No great soldier, but a man of dauntless courage. No strategist, but a leader who could be trusted with his country's honour. Upright, honourable, honest, brave—and it had come to this. It had come to his sitting shamefaced before a poor unknown sawbones—not daring to look him in the face.

His duty was plain enough. Charlie Thurkow's turn had come. Charlie Thurkow must be sent to Capoo—by his father's orders. But the old man—the soldier who had never turned his back on danger— could not do it.

We were old friends, this man and I. I owed him much. He had made my career, and I am afraid I had been his accomplice more than once. But we had never wronged any other man. Fitz had aided and abetted more than once. It had been an understood thing between Fitz and myself that the winds of our service were to be tempered to Charlie Thurkow, and I imagine we had succeeded in withholding the fact from his knowledge. Like most spoilt sons, Charlie was a little selfish, with that convenient blindness which does not perceive how much dirty work is done by others.

But we had never deceived the brigadier. He was not easily deceived in those matters which concerned his son. I knew the old man very well, and for years I had been content to sit by the hour together and talk with him of Charlie. To tell the honest truth, Master Charlie was a very ordinary young man. I take it that a solution of all that was best in five Charles Thurkows would make up one Fitz Marner.

There was something horribly pathetic in the blindness of this usually keen old man on this one point. He would sit there stiffly behind the decanter fingering his wine-glass, and make statements about Charlie which would have made me blush had that accomplishment not belonged to my past. A certain cheery impertinence which characterized Charlie was fondly set down as savoir-faire and dash. A cheap wit was held to be brilliancy and conversational finish. And somehow we had all fallen into the way of humouring the brigadier. I never told him, for instance, that his son was a very second-rate doctor and a nervous operator. I never hinted that many of the cures which had been placed to his credit were the work of Fitz—that the men had no confidence in Charlie, and that they were somewhat justified in their opinion.

"This is a bad business," repeated the brigadier, looking hard at the despatch that lay on the table before him.

"Yes," I answered.

He tossed the paper towards me and pointed to a chair.

"Sit down!" he said sharply. "Have you had any report from poor Barber?"

In response I handed him the beginning of an official report. I say the beginning, because it consisted of four lines only. It was in Barber's handwriting, and it broke off suddenly in the middle of a word before it began to tell me anything. In its way it was a tragedy. Death had called for Barber while he was wondering how to spell "nauseous." I also gave him Colonel Simpson's letter, which he read carefully.

"What is it?" he asked suddenly, as he laid the papers aside.

"Officially—I don't know."

"And unofficially?"

"I am afraid it is cholera."

The brigadier raised his glass of claret a few inches from the table, but his hand was too unsteady, and he set the glass down again untouched. I was helplessly sorry for him. There was something abject and humiliating in his averted gaze. Beneath his white moustache his lips were twitching nervously.

For a few moments there was silence, and I dreaded his next words. I was trembling for his manhood.

"I suppose something must be done for them," he said at length, hoarsely, and it was hard to believe that the voice was the voice of our leader—a man dreaded in warfare, respected in peace.

"Yes," I answered uncompromisingly.

"Some one must go to them—"

"Yes."

Again there was that horrid silence, broken only by the tramp of the sentinel outside the glassless windows.

"Who?" asked the brigadier, in little more than a whisper.

I suppose he expected it of me—I suppose he knew that even for him, even in mercy to an old man whose only joy in life trembled at that moment in the balance, I could not perpetrate a cruel injustice.

"It devolves on Charlie," I answered.

He gave one quick glance beneath his lashes, and again lowered his eyes. I heard a long gasping sound, as if he found difficulty in breathing. He sat upright, and threw back his shoulders with a pitiable effort to be strong.

"Is he up to the work?" he asked quietly.

"I cannot conscientiously say that he is not."

"D—-n it, man," he burst out suddenly, "is there no way out of it?"

"Yes—one way!"

"What is it?"

"I will go."

"That is impossible," he answered with a sublime unconsciousness of his own huge selfishness which almost made me laugh. This man would have asked nothing for himself. For his son he had no shame in asking all. He would have accepted my offer, I could see that, had it been possible.

At this moment the door opened, and Charlie Thurkow came in. His eyes were bright with excitement, and he glanced at us both quickly. He was quite well aware of his father's weakness in regard to himself, and I am afraid he sometimes took advantage of it. He often ignored discipline entirely, as he did in coming into the room at that moment.

I suppose there is in every one a sense of justice which accounts for the subtle annoyance caused by the devotion of parents and others—a devotion which has not the good sense to hide itself. There are few things more annoying than an exhibition of unjust love. I rose at once. The coming interview would be either painful or humiliating, and I preferred not to assist at it.

As I went down the dark passages a man in a staff uniform, wearing spurs, clanked past me. I did not know until later that it was Fitz, for I could not see his face.

I went back to my quarters, and was busy for some time with certain technicalities of my trade which are not worth detailing here. While I and my two dispensers were still measuring out and mixing drugs, Fitz came to us.

"I am going to Capoo," he said quietly.

In his silent, quick way he was taking in all that we were doing. We were packing medical stores for Capoo. I did not answer him, but waited for further details. We could not speak openly before the two assistants at that moment, and somehow we never spoke about it at all. I glanced up at him. His face was pale beneath the sunburn. There was a drawn look just above his moustache, as if his lips were held tightly.

"I volunteered," he said, "and the brigadier accepted my offer."

Whenever the word "duty" is mentioned, I think of Fitz to this day.

I said nothing, but went on with my work. The whole business was too disgusting, too selfish, too unjust, to bear speaking of.

I had long known that Fitz loved Elsie Matheson. In my feeble way, according to my scanty opportunity, I had endeavoured to assist him. But her name had never been mentioned between us except carelessly in passing conversation. I knew no details. I did not even know whether Elsie knew of his love; but it was exceedingly likely that if she did, he had not told her. As to her feelings, I was ignorant. She loved somebody, that much I knew. One can generally tell that. One sees it in a woman's eyes. But it is one thing to know that a woman loves, and quite another to find out whom she loves. I have tried in vain more than once. I once thought that I was the favoured person—not with Elsie, with quite another woman— but I was mistaken. I only know that those women who have that in their eyes which I have learnt to recognize are better women than those who lack it.

Fitz was the first to speak.

"Don't put all of that into one case," he said to one of the dispensers, indicating a row of bottles that stood on the floor. "Divide the different drugs over the cases, so that one or two of them can be lost without doing much harm."

His voice was quite calm and practical.

"When do you go?" I asked curtly. I was rather afraid of trusting my voice too long, for Fitz was one of the few men who have really entered into my life sufficiently to leave a blank space behind them. I have been a rolling stone, and what little moss I ever gathered soon got knocked off, but it left scars. Fitz left a scar.

"My orders are to start to-night—with one trooper," he answered.

"What time?"

"In half an hour."

"I will ride with you a few miles," I said.

He turned and went to his quarters, which were next to mine. I was still at work when Charlie Thurkow came in. He had changed his dress clothes for an old working suit. I was working in my evening dress—a subtle difference.

"Do you want any help?" he asked. I could hear a grievance in his voice.

"Of course; get on packing that case; plenty of straw between the bottles."

He obeyed me, working slowly, badly, without concentration, as he always did.

"It's a beastly shame, isn't it?" he muttered presently.

"Yes," I answered, "it is."

I suppose he did not detect the sarcasm.

"Makes me look a fool," he said heatedly. "Why couldn't the governor let me go and take my chance?"

The answer to this question being beyond my ken, I kept a discreet silence. Giving him further instructions, I presently left my junior to complete the task of packing up the necessary medicaments for Capoo.

In less than half an hour Fitz and I mounted our horses. A few of the fellows came out of the messroom, cigar in mouth, to say good- bye to Fitz. One or two of them called out "Good luck" as we left them. Each wish was followed by a little laugh, as if the wisher was ashamed of showing even so minute an emotion. It was, after all, all in the way of our business. Many a time Fitz and I had stood idle while these same men rode out to face death. It was Fitz's turn now—that was all.

The Sikh trooper was waiting for us in the middle of the square—in the moonlight—a grand picturesque figure. A long-faced, silent man, with deep eyes and a grizzled moustache. He wheeled his horse, and dropped ten paces in our rear.

In the course of a varied experience Fitz and I had learnt to ride hard. We rode hard that night beneath the yellow moon, through the sleeping, odorous country. We both knew too well that cholera under canvas is like a fire in a timber-yard. You may pump your drugs upon it, but without avail unless the pumping be scientific. Fitz represented science. Every moment meant a man's life. Our horses soon settled into their stride with a pleasant creaking sound of warm leather and willing lungs.

The moon was above and behind us; we each had a galloping shadow beneath our horse's forefeet. It was a sandy country, and the hoofs only produced a dull thud. There was something exhilarating in the speed—in the shimmering Indian atmosphere. A sense of envy came over me, and I dreaded the moment when I should have to turn and ride soberly home, leaving Fitz to complete his forty-five miles before daylight.

We were riding our chargers. They had naturally fallen into step, and bounded beneath us with a regular, mechanical rhythm. Both alike had their heads down, their shoulders forward, with that intelligent desire to do well which draws a man's heart towards a horse in preference to any other animal. I looked sideways at Fitz, and waited for him to speak. But he was staring straight in front of him, and seemed lost in thought.

"You know," I said at length, "you have done that old man an ill- turn. Even if you come back he will never forgive himself. He will never look either of us straight in the face again."

"Can't help that," replied Fitz. "The thing—" He paused, as if choosing his words. "If," he went on rather quickly, "the worst comes to the worst, don't let people—ANY ONE—think that I did it because I didn't care, because I set no value on my life. The thing was forced upon me. I was asked to volunteer for it."

"All right," I answered, rather absent-mindedly perhaps. I was wondering who "any one" might be, and also who had asked him to throw away his life. The latter might, of course, be the brigadier. Surely it could not have been Elsie. But, as I said before, I always was uncertain about women.

I did not say anything about hoping for the best. Fitz and I had left all that nonsense behind us years before. We did our business amidst battle, murder, and sudden death. Perhaps we were callous, perhaps we had only learnt to value the thing at its true worth, and did not set much fear on death.

And then, I must ask you to believe, we fell to talking "shop." I knew a little more about cholera than did Fitz, and we got quite interested in our conversation. It is, I have found, only in books that men use the last moment to advantage. Death has been my road- fellow all through life, and no man has yet died in my arms saying quite the right thing. Some of them made a joke, others were merely commonplace, as all men really are whether living or dying.

When the time came for me to turn back, Fitz had said nothing fit for post-mortem reproduction. We had talked unmitigated "shop," except the few odd observations I have set down.

We shook hands, and I turned back at once. As I galloped I looked back, and in the light of the great tropical moon I saw Fitz sitting forward in his saddle as the horse rose to the slope of a hill, galloping away into the night, into the unknown, on his mission of mercy. At his heels rode the Sikh, enormous, silent, soldierly.

During my steady run home I thought of those things concerning my craft which required immediate consideration. Would it be necessary to send down to India for help? Cholera at Capoo might mean cholera everywhere in this new unknown country. What about the women and children? The Wandering Jew was abroad; would he wander in our direction, with the legendary curse following on his heels? Was I destined to meet this dread foe a third time? I admit that the very thought caused a lump to rise in my throat. For I love Thomas Atkins. He is manly and honest according to his lights. It does not hurt me very much to see him with a bullet through his lungs or a sabre cut through the collar-bone down to the same part of his anatomy. But it does hurt me exceedingly to see honest Thomas die between the sheets—the death of any common civilian beggar. Thomas is too good for that.

It was nearly three o'clock in the morning when I rode into the palace square. All round I saw the sentinels, their bayonets gleaming in the moonlight. A man was walking backwards and forwards in the middle of the square by himself. When he heard me he came towards me. At first I thought that it was my servant waiting to take the horse, but a moment later I recognized Charlie Thurkow— recognized him by his fair hair, for he was hatless. At the same time my syce roused himself from slumber in the shadow of an arch, and ran forward to my stirrup.

"Come to the hospital!" said Thurkow, the moment I alighted. His voice was dull and unnatural. I once heard a man speak in the same voice while collecting his men for a rush which meant certain death. The man was duly killed, and I think he was trembling with fear when he ran to his death.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I don't know."

We walked—almost ran—to the hospital, a long low building in the palace compound. Charlie Thurkow led the way to a ward which we had never used—a ward I had set apart for infectious cases. A man was dozing in a long chair in the open window. As we entered he rose hastily and brought a lamp. We bent over a bed—the only one occupied. The occupant was a man I did not know. He looked like a Goorkha, and he was dying. In a few moments I knew all that there was to know. I knew that the Wandering Jew had passed our way.

"Yes," I said, rising from my knees at the bedside; "we have it."

Of the days that followed it is not my intention to say much. A woman once told me that I was afraid of nothing. She was mistaken. If she chance to read this and recognize it, I hope she will believe the assertion: I am, and always have been, afraid of cholera—in India. In Europe it is a different matter. The writing of those days would be unpleasant to me; the reading would be still less pleasant to the reader.

Brigadier-General Thurkow rose to the occasion, as we all expected him to do. It is one thing to send a man to a distant danger, and quite another to go with him into a danger which is close at hand. Charlie Thurkow and I were the only two doctors on the spot, and before help could reach us we should probably all be dead or cured. There was no shirking now. Charlie and I were at work night and day, and in the course of thirty-six hours Charlie got interested in it. He reached the fighting point—that crisis in an epidemic of which doctors can tell—that point where there is a certain glowing sense of battle over each bed—where death and the doctor see each other face to face—fight hand to hand for the life.

The doctor loses his interest in the patient as a friend or a patient; all his attention is centred on the life as a life, and a point to be scored against the adversary Death.

We had a very bad time for two days. At the end of that time I had officers bearing Her Majesty's commission serving under me as assistant nurses, and then the women came into it. The first to offer herself was the wife of a non-commissioned officer in the Engineers, who had been through Netley. I accepted her. The second woman was Elsie Matheson. I refused point blank.

"Sooner or later," she said, looking at me steadily with something in her eyes which I could not make out, "you will have to take me."

"Does your father know you have come to me?" I retorted.

"Yes; I came with his consent."

I shook my head and returned to my writing. I was filling in a list of terrific length. She did not go away, but stood in front of me with a certain tranquillity which was unnatural under the circumstances.

"Do you want help?" she asked calmly.

"God knows I do."

"But not mine—?"

"Not yet, Elsie. I have not got so far as that yet."

I did not look up, and she stood quite still over me—looking down at me—probably noting that the hair was getting a little thin on the top of my head. This is not a joke. I repeat she was probably noting that. People do note such things at such moments.

"If you do not take me," she said, in a singularly even voice, "I shall go up to Capoo. Can you not see that that is the only thing that can save me from going to Capoo—or going mad?"

I laid aside my pen, and looked up into her face, which she made no pretence of hiding from me. And I saw that it was as she said.

"You can go to work at once," I said, "under Mrs. Martin, in ward number four."

When she had left me I did not go on filling in the list from the notes in my pocket-book. I fell to wasting time instead. So it was Fitz. I was not surprised, but I was very pleased. I was not surprised, because I have usually found that the better sort of woman has as keen a scent for the good men as we have. And I thought of old Fitz—the best man I ever served with—fighting up at Capoo all alone, while I fought down in the valley. There was a certain sense of companionship in the thought, though my knowledge and experience told me that our chances of meeting again were very small indeed.

We had not heard from Capoo. The conclusion was obvious: they had no one to send.

Elsie Matheson soon became a splendid nurse. She was quite fearless—not with dash, but with the steady fearlessness that comes from an ever-present sense of duty, which is the best. She was kind and tender, but she was a little absent. In spirit she was nursing at Capoo; with us she was only in the body.

When Charlie Thurkow heard that she had gone into ward number four, he displayed a sudden, singular anger.

"It's not fit for her," he said. "How could you do it?"

And I noticed that, so far as lay in his power, he kept the worst cases away from number four.

It occasionally happens in life that duty is synonymous with inclination; not often, of course, but occasionally. I twisted inclination round into duty, and put Elsie to night work, while Charlie Thurkow kept the day watches. I myself was forced to keep both as best I could.

Whenever I went into number four ward at night before (save the mark) going to bed, I found Elsie Matheson waiting for me. It must be remembered that she was quite cut off from the little world that surrounded us in the palace. She had no means of obtaining news. Her only link with the outer universe was an occasional patient brought in more dead than alive, and too much occupied with his own affairs to trouble about those of other people.

"Any news?" she would whisper to me as we went round the beds together; and I knew that she meant Capoo. Capoo was all the world for her. It is strange how some little unknown spot on the earth will rise up and come into our lives never to leave the memory again.

"Nothing," I replied with a melancholy regularity.

Once only she broke through her reserve—through the habit of bearing pain in silence which she had acquired by being so much among dying men.

"Have you no opinion?" she asked, with a sharpness in her voice which I forgave as I heard it.

"Upon what subject?"

"Upon. . . the chances."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"He is a good man—there is no better in India—that is all I can say. Just hold the candle a little closer, will you, please? Thanks—yes—he is quite dead."

We passed on to the next bed.

"It is both his duty and his inclination to take care of himself," I said as we went—going back with her in the spirit to Capoo.

"How do you know it is his inclination?" she asked guardedly.

And I knew that I was on the right path. The vague message given to "any one" by Fitz as he rode by my side that night—only a week before, although it seemed to be months—that message was intended for Elsie. It referred to something that had gone before, of which I had no knowledge.

"Because he told me so," I answered.

And then we went on with our work. Charlie Thurkow was quite right. I knew that all along. It was not fit for her. Elsie was too young, too gentle and delicate for such a place as ward number four. I make no mention of her beauty, for I took no heed of it then. It was there—but it had nothing to do with this matter. Also I have never seen why women who are blessed or cursed by beauty should be more considered in such matters, as they undoubtedly are.

I was up and about all that night. The next morning rose gloomily, as if the day was awakening unrefreshed by a feverish sleep. The heat had been intense all night, and we could look for nothing but an intensification of it when the sun rose with a tropical aggressiveness. I wanted to get my reports filled in before lying down to snatch a little rest, and was still at work when Charlie Thurkow came in to relieve me. He looked ghastly, but we all did that, and I took no notice. He took up the ward-sheets and glanced down the columns.

"Wish I had gone to Capoo," he muttered. "It couldn't have been worse than this."

I had finished my writing, and I rose. As I did so Charlie suddenly clapped his hand to his hip.

"I say!" he exclaimed, "I say!"

He looked at me in a stupid way, and then suddenly he tottered towards me, and I caught him.

"Old chap!" he exclaimed thickly, with his face against my shoulder, "I've got it. Take me to number four."

He had seen by the list that there was a vacant cot in number four.

I carried him there, stumbling as I went, for I was weak from want of sleep.

Elsie had just gone to her room, and Mrs. Martin was getting the vacant bed ready. I was by that bedside all day. All that I knew I did for Charlie Thurkow. I dosed myself with more than one Indian drug to stimulate the brain—to keep myself up to doing and thinking. This was a white man's life, and God forgive me if I set undue store upon it as compared with the black lives we were losing daily. This was a brain that could think for the rest. There was more than one man's life wrapped up in Charlie Thurkow's. One can never tell. My time might come at any moment, and the help we had sent for could not reach us for another fortnight.

Charlie said nothing. He thanked me at intervals for some little service rendered, and nearly all the time his eyes were fixed upon the clock. He was reckoning with his own life. He did not want to die in the day, but in the night. He was deliberately spinning out his life till the night nurse came on duty. I suppose that in his superficial, happy-go-lucky way he loved her.

I pulled him through that day, and we managed to refrain from waking Elsie up. At nightfall she came to her post. When she came into the room I was writing a note to the brigadier. I watched her face as she came towards us. There was only distress upon it—nothing else. Even women—even beautiful women grow callous; thank Heaven! Charlie Thurkow gave a long sigh of relief when she came.

My note was duly sent to the brigadier, and five minutes afterwards I went out on to the verandah to speak to him. I managed to keep him out of the room by a promise that he should be sent for later. I made no pretence about it, and he knew that it was only the question of a few hours when he walked back across the palace square to his quarters. I came back to the verandah, and found Elsie waiting to speak to me.

"Will he die?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Quite sure?"

There was a strange glitter in her eyes which I could not understand.

"Quite," I answered, forgetting to be professional. She looked at me for a moment as if she were about to say something, and then she apparently decided not to say it.

I went towards a long chair which stood on the verandah.

"I shall lie down here," I said, "and sleep for an hour."

"Yes, do," she answered almost gratefully.

"You will wake me if you want me?"

"Yes."

"Wake me when. . . the change comes."

"Yes."

In a few moments I was asleep. I do not know what woke me up. It seemed to be very late. All the sounds of barrack life were hushed. The moon was just up. I rose to my feet and turned to the open window. But there I stopped.

Elsie was kneeling by Charlie Thurkow's bed. She was leaning over him, and I could see that she was kissing him. And I knew that she did not love him.

I kicked against the chair purposely. Elsie turned and looked towards me, with her hand still resting on Charlie Thurkow's forehead. She beckoned me to go to them, and I saw at once that he was much weaker. She was stroking his hair gently. She either gave me credit for great discernment, or she did not care what I thought.

I saw that the time had come for me to fulfil my promise to the brigadier, and went out of the open window to send one of the sentinels for him. As I was speaking to the man I heard the clatter of a horse's feet, and a Sikh rode hard into the palace square. I went towards him, and he, recognizing me, handed me a note which he extracted from the folds of his turban. I opened the paper and read it by the light of the moon. My heart gave a leap in my throat. It was from Fitz. News at last from Capoo.

"We have got it under," he wrote. "I am coming down to help you. Shall be with you almost as soon as the bearer."

As I walked back towards the hospital the brigadier came running behind me, and caught me up as I stepped in by the window. I had neither time nor inclination just then to tell him that I had news from Capoo. The Sikh no doubt brought official news which would reach their destination in due course. And in the mean time Charlie Thurkow was dying.

We stood round that bed and waited silent, emotionless for the angel. Charlie knew only too well that the end was very near. From time to time he smiled rather wearily at one or the other of us, and once over his face there came that strange look of a higher knowledge which I have often noted, as if he knew something that we did not—something which he had been forbidden to tell us.

While we were standing there the matting of the window was pushed aside, and Fitz came softly into the dimly lighted room. He glanced at me, but attempted no sort of salutation. I saw him exchange a long silent look with Elsie, and then he took his station at the bedside next to Elsie, and opposite to the brigadier, who never looked up.

Charlie Thurkow recognized him, and gave him one of those strangely patronizing smiles. Then he turned his sunken eyes towards Elsie. He looked at her with a gaze that became more and more fixed. We stood there for a few minutes—then I spoke.

"He is dead," I said.

The brigadier raised his eyes and looked across to Fitz. For a second these two men looked down into each other's souls, and I suppose Fitz had his reward. I suppose the brigadier had paid his debt in full. I had been through too many painful scenes to wish to prolong this. So I turned away, and a general move was the result.

Then I saw that Elsie and Fitz had been standing hand-in-hand all the while.

So wags the world.



THROUGH THE GATE OF TEARS



Give us—ah! give us—but Yesterday!

In the old days, when the Mahanaddy was making her reputation, she had her tragedy. And Dr. Mark Ruthine has not forgotten it, nor forgiven himself yet. Doctors, like the rest of us, are apt to make a hideous mistake or two which resemble the stream anchors of a big steamer warping out into the Hooghly. We leave them behind, but we do not let go of them. They make a distinct difference to the course of our journey down the stream. Sometimes they hold us back; occasionally they swing us into the middle of the current, where there is no shoal. Like the stream anchors, they are always there, behind us, for our good.

Some few of the Mahanaddy passengers have remarked that Mark Ruthine invariably locks his cabin-door whenever he leaves the little den that serves him for surgery and home. This is the outward sign of an inward unforgotten sore.

This, by the way, is not a moral tale. Virtue does not triumph, nor will vice be crushed. It is the mere record of a few mistakes, culminating in Mark Ruthine's blunder—a little note on human nature without vice in it; for there is little vice in human nature if one takes the trouble to sift that which masquerades as such.

It was, therefore, in old days, long ago, on an outward voyage to Madras, that Miss Norah Hood was placed under the care of the captain, hedged safely round by an engagement to an old playmate, and shipped off to the land where the Anglo-Saxon dabbles in tragedy.

Norah is fortunately not a common name. Mark Ruthine's countenance- -a still one—changes ever so slightly whenever he hears the name or sees it in print. Another outward sign, and, as such, naturally small.

When the captain was introduced by a tall and refined old clergyman to Miss Norah Hood, he found himself shaking hands with a grave young person of unassertive beauty. Hers was the loveliness of the violet, which is apt to pall in this modern day—to aggravate, and to suggest wanton waste. For feminine loveliness is on the wane— marred, like many other good things, by over-education. Norah Hood was a typical country parson's daughter, who knew the right and did it, ignored the wrong and refused to believe in it.

The captain was busy with his Mahanaddy. He looked over his shoulder, and, seeing Mark Ruthine, called him by a glance.

"This is my doctor," he said, to the scholarly parson. "He will be happy to see that Miss Hood is comfortably settled among us. I am naturally rather a busy man until we leave the Start Light behind us."

So Mark Ruthine hovered about, and discreetly looked the other way when the moment of parting came. He suspected, shrewdly enough, that Norah was the eldest of a large family—one less to feed and clothe. An old story. As the great ship glided gently away from the quay—in those days the Mahanaddy loaded at Southampton—he went and stood beside Norah Hood. Not that he had anything to say to her; but his calling of novelist, his experience of doctor, taught him that a silent support is what women sometimes want. They deal so largely in words that a few unexplained deeds sometimes refresh them.

He stood there until the tall, slim form in the rusty black coat was no longer discernible. Then he made a little movement and spoke.

"Have you been to your cabin?" he asked. "Do you know where it is?"

"I have not seen it," she answered composedly. "The number of my berth is seventy-seven."

There was a singular lack of fluster. It was impossible to divine that she had never trod the deck of a big steamer before—that her walk in life had been limited to the confines of a tiny, remote parish in the eastern counties. Ruthine glanced at her. He saw that she was quite self-possessed, with something more complete than the self-possession of good breeding. It was quite obvious that this woman—for Norah Hood was leaving girlhood behind—had led a narrow, busy life. She had obviously lost the habit of attaching much importance to her own feelings, her own immediate fate or passing desires, because more pressing matters had so long absorbed her. There was a faint suggestion of that self-neglect, almost amounting to self-contempt, which characterizes the manner of overburdened motherhood. This would account for her apparent ignorance of the fact that she was beautiful.

As he led the way down below Ruthine glanced at her again. He had an easy excuse for so doing on the brass-bound stairs, where landsmen feet may slip. He was, above all things, a novelist, although he wrote under another and greater name, and those around him knew him not. He looked more at human minds than human bodies, and he was never weary of telling his friends that he was a poor doctor. He concluded—indeed, her father had almost told him—that she was going out to be married. But he needed not to be told that she was going to marry a man whom she did not love. He found that out for himself in a flash of his quiet grey eyes. An expert less skilful than himself could see that Norah Hood did not know what love was. Some women are thus—some few, God help them! go through life in the same ignorance.

He took her down to her cabin—a small one, which she was fortunate enough to have to herself. He told her the hours of the meals, the habits of the ship, and the customs of the ocean. He had a grave way with him, this doctor, and could put on a fatherly manner when the moment needed it. Norah listened with a gravity equal to his own. She listened, moreover, with an intelligence which he noted.

"If you will come," he said, "on deck again, I will introduce you to a very kind friend of mine—Mrs. Stellasis. You have heard of John Stellasis?"

"No," answered Norah, rather indifferently.

"You will some day—all the world will. Stellasis is one of our great men in India. Mrs. Stellasis is a great lady."

This was a prophecy.

They went on deck, and Mark Ruthine effected the introduction. He stayed beside them for a few moments, and did not leave them until they were deeply engrossed in a conversation respecting babies in general, and in particular a small specimen which Mrs. Stellasis had lately received.

An Indian-going steamer is rather like a big box of toys. She goes bumping down Channel, rolling through the Bay, and, by the time that Gibraltar is left behind, she has shaken her passengers into their places.

Norah Hood shook down very quietly into the neighbourhood of Mrs. Stellasis, who liked her and began to understand her. Mrs. Stellasis—a good woman and a mother—pitied Norah Hood with an increasing pity; for as the quiet Mediterranean days wore to a close she had established without doubt the fact that the engagement to the old playmate was a sordid contract entered into in all innocence by a girl worthy of a better fate. But Mrs. Stellasis hoped for the best. She thought of the "specimen" slumbering in a berth six sizes too large for it, and reflected that Norah Hood might snatch considerable happiness out of the contract after all.

"Do you know anything of the old playmate?" Mrs. Stellasis asked Dr. Ruthine suddenly one afternoon in the Red Sea.

Mark Ruthine looked into the pleasant face and saw a back to the question—many backs, extending away into a perspective of feminine speculation.

"No," he answered slowly.

They lapsed into a little silence. And then they both looked up, and saw Norah Hood walking slowly backwards and forwards with Manly Fenn of the Guides.

After all, it was only natural that these two young persons should drift together. They were both so "quiet and stupid." Neither had much to say to the world, and they both alike heard what the world had to say with that somewhat judicial calm which knocks down feeble wit.

There was no sparkle about either of them, and the world is given to preferring bad champagne to good burgundy because of the sparkle. The world therefore left Manly Fenn alone; and Manly Fenn, well pleased, went about his own business. It has been decreed that men who go about their own business very carefully find that it is a larger affair than they at first took it to be. Manly Fenn had never been aware until quite lately that these things which he took to be his own affairs were in reality the business of an Empire. The Empire found it out before Manly Fenn—found it out, indeed, when its faithful servant was hiring himself out as assistant- herdsman to a large farmer on the Beloochistan frontier.

And Major Fenn had to buy a new uniform, had to interview many high- placed persons, and had, finally, to present himself before his Gracious Sovereign, who hooked a little cross into the padding of his tunic—all of which matters were extremely disagreeable to Manly Fenn.

Finally, the devil—as the captain bluffly affirmed—brought it to pass that he, Manly Fenn, should take passage in the Mahanaddy on the voyage of which we have to do.

It was very sudden, and many thorough things are so. It happened somewhere in the Red Sea, and Mrs. Stellasis was probably the first to sniff danger in the breeze. That was why she asked Mark Ruthine if he knew anything about the old playmate to whom Norah Hood was engaged. That was why Mark Ruthine looked for the back of the question; for he was almost as expert as a woman among the humanities.

Somewhere between Ismailia and the Gate of Tears, Love came on board the Mahanaddy—a sorry pilot—and took charge of Manly Fenn and the girl who was going out to marry her old playmate.

It was a serious matter from the first—like a fever that takes a man of middle age who has never been ill before.

There was a consultation of the authorities—Mrs Stellasis, namely, and the captain, and Mark Ruthine.

The captain disgraced himself early in the proceedings.

"Perhaps it is only a flirtation," he said.

Whereupon Mrs. Stellasis laughed scornfully, and the mariner collapsed. Moreover, the consultation resulted in nothing, although Stellasis himself joined it, looking grave and thoughtful behind his great grey moustache.

"Known Manly Fenn for ten years," he said; "but I am afraid of him still. I cannot speak to him. Can you not say something to the girl?"

But Mrs. Stellasis shook her head with determination. That was the worst of it—they were not the sort of persons to whom one can say such things. The captain was technically responsible, but he had proved himself utterly incompetent. "No," said Mrs. Stellasis finally. There was nothing to be done but hope for the best. Of course, Mrs. Stellasis was without conscience—quite without justice. It is to be feared that nearly all women are. She was all for Manly Fenn and dead against the old playmate, whom she intuitively described as "that stupid."

In the mean time all the ship knew it. In some ways the two culprits were singularly innocent. It is possible that they did not know that the world is never content unless it is elbow-deep in its neighbour's pie—that their affairs were the talk of the Mahanaddy. It is also possible that they knew and did not care.

The good steamer pounded out of the Gate of Tears and struck a bee- line across the Arabian Sea. The passengers settled down to await the sequel which would be delivered to them at Madras.

Norah Hood and Fenn were together from morning till night. They seemed to ignore the sequel, which made it all the more exciting for the lookers-on. Norah still saw a good deal of Mrs. Stellasis. She still took a great interest in the "specimen," whose small ailments received her careful attention. With Mark Ruthine she was almost familiar, in her quiet way. She came to his little surgery to get such minute potions as the "specimen" might require. She even got to know the bottles, and mixed the drugs herself while he laughingly watched her. She had dispensed for a village population at home, and knew a little medicine.

Ruthine encouraged her to come, gave her the freedom of his medicine chests, and all the while he watched her. She interested him. There were so many things which he could not reconcile.

In some ways she was quite a different woman. This love which had come to her suddenly—rather late in her life—had made a strange being of her. She was still gentle, and rather prim and quite self- possessed. She looked Ruthine in the face, and knew that he knew all about her; but she was not in the least discomposed. She was astonishingly daring. She defied him and the whole world—gently.

The little Dutch lighthouse at Galle was duly sighted, and the Mahanaddy was in the Bay of Bengal. The last dinner was duly consumed, and the usual speech made by the usual self-assertive old civilian. And, for the last time, the Mahanaddy passengers said good night to each other, seeking their cabins with a pleasant sense of anticipation. The next day would bring the sequel.

A stewardess awoke Mark Ruthine up before it was light. He followed the woman to number seventy-seven cabin. There he found Norah Hood, dressed, lying quietly on her berth—dead.

A bottle—one of his bottles from the medicine-chest—stood on the table beside her.



A PARIAH



"I have heard that there is corn in Egypt."

Slyne's Chare is in South Shields, and Mason's Chop House stands at the lower corner of Slyne's Chare—Mason's Chop House, where generations of honest Tyneside sailors have consumed pounds of honest mutton and beef, and onions therewith. For your true salt loves an onion ashore, which makes him a pleasanter companion at sea. Mason's Chop House is a low-roofed, red-tiled, tarred cottage with a balcony—a "balcohny" overhanging the river. It is quite evident that the "balcohny" was originally built, and has subsequently been kept in repair, by ships' carpenters. It is so glaringly ship-shape, so redolent of tar, so ridiculously strong.

The keen fresh breeze—and there is nothing keener, fresher, stronger, and wholesomer in the world than that which comes roaring up between the two piers of the Tyne—this breeze blows right through Mason's, and blows the fume of cooking out into Slyne's Chare.

It is evening—tea-time—and the day's work is almost done; for Mason's does little in suppers. A bullet-headed boy is rubbing pewter pots at the door. Mrs. Mason, comfortably somnolent at the entrance of the little kitchen, watches her daughter—comely, grave- faced Annie Mason—"our Annie," as she is called, who is already folding the table-cloths. A few belated customers linger in the partitioned loose-boxes which lend a certain small privacy to the tables, and often save a fight. They are talking in gruff, North- country voices, which are never harsh.

A man comes in, after a moment's awkward pause at the open door, and seeks a secluded seat where the gas overhead hardly affords illumination. He is a broad-built man—a Tynesider; not so very big for South Shields; a matter of six feet one, perhaps. He carries a blue spotted handkerchief against his left cheek, and the boy with the pewter pots stares eagerly at the other. A boy of poor tact this; for the customer's right cheek is horribly disfigured. It is all bruised and battered in from the curve of a square jaw to the cheek-bone, which is broken. But the eye is intact; a shrewd, keen eye, accustomed to the penetration of a Northern mist—accustomed to a close scrutiny of men's faces. It is painfully obvious that this sailor—for gait and clothes and manner set aside all other crafts— is horribly conscious of his deformity.

"Got the toothache?" inquires the tactless youth.

The new-comer replies in the negative and orders a cup of tea and a herring. It is Annie who brings the simple meal and sets it down without looking at the man.

"Thanks," he growls in his brown beard, and the woman pauses suddenly. She listens, as if hearing some distant sound. Then she slowly turns—for she has gone a step or two from the table—and makes a pretence of setting the salt and pepper closer to him.

Three ships had come up with the afternoon tide—a coaster, a Norwegian barque in ballast, and a full-rigged ship with nitrate from the West Coast of South America.

"Just ashore?" inquired Annie—economical with her words, as they mostly are round the Northern river.

"Ay!"

"From the West Coast?"

"Ay," grumbles the man. He holds the handkerchief to his cheek, and turns the herring tentatively with a fork.

"You'll find it's a good enough fish," says the woman, bluntly. Her two hands are pressed to her comely bosom in a singular way.

"Ay!" says the man again, as if he had no other word.

The clock strikes six, and the boy, more mindful of his own tea than his neighbour's ailments, slips on his jacket and goes home. The last customers dawdle out with a grunt intended for a salutation. Mrs. Mason is softly heard to snore. And all the while Annie Mason- -all the colour vanished from her wholesome face—stands with her hands clutching her dress, gazing down at the man, who still examines the herring with a self-conscious awkwardness.

"Geordie!" she says. They are all called Geordie in South Shields.

"Ay, lass!" he answers, shamefacedly.

Annie Mason sits down suddenly—opposite to him. He does not look up but remains, his face half hidden by the spotted blue handkerchief, a picture of self-conscious guilt and shame.

"What did ye did it for, Geordie?" she asks, breathlessly. "Eleven years, come March—oh, it was cruel!"

"What did I do it for?" he repeats. "What did I do it for? Why, lass, can't ye see my face?"

He drops the handkerchief, and holds up his poor scarred countenance. He does not look at her, but away past her with the pathetic shame of a maimed dog. The cheek thus suddenly exposed to view is whole and brown and healthy. Beneath the mahogany-coloured skin there is a glow singularly suggestive of a blush.

"Ay, I see your face," she answers, with a note of tenderness for the poor scarred cheek. "I hope you haven't been at the drink."

He shakes his head with a little sad smile that twists up his one- sided mouth.

"Is it because you wanted to get shot of me?" asks the woman, with a sort of breathlessness. She has large grey-blue eyes with a look of constant waiting in them—a habit of looking up at the open door at the sound of every footstep.

"D—-n it, Annie. Could I come back to you with a face like this; and you the prettiest lass on the Tyneside?"

She is fumbling with her apron string. There is a half-coquettish bend of her head—with the grey hairs already at the temple— awakened perhaps by some far-off echo in his passionate voice. She looks up slowly, and does not answer his question.

"Tell us," she says slowly. "Tell us where ye've been."

"Been?—oh, I don't know, lass! I don't rightly remember. Not that it matters. Up the West Coast, trading backwards and forwards. I've got my master's certificate now. Serving first mate on board the Mallard to Falmouth for orders, and they ordered us to the Tyne. I brought her round—I knew the way. I thought you'd be married, lass. But maybe ye are?"

"Maybe I'm daft," puts in Annie coolly.

"I greatly feared," the man goes on with the slow self-consciousness of one unaccustomed to talk of himself. "I greatly feared I'd meet up with a bairn of yours playing in the doorway. Losh! I could not have stood THAT! But that's why I stayed away, Annie, lass! So that you might marry a man with a face on him. I thought you would not know me if I held up my handkerchief over my other cheek!"

There is a strange gleam in the woman's eyes—a gleam that one or two of the old masters have succeeded in catching and imparting to the face of their Madonnas, but only one or two.

"How did you come by your hurt?" she asks in her low voice.

"Board the old Walleroo going out. You mind the old ship? We had a fire in the hold, and the skipper he would go down alone to locate it before we cut a hole in the deck and shipped the hose in. The old man did not come up again. Ye mind him. Old Rutherford of Jarrow. And I went down and looked for him. It was a hell of smoke and fire, and something in the cargo stinking like—like hell fire as it burnt. I got a hold of the old man, and was fetching him out on my hands and knees, when something busts up and sends us all through the deck. I had three months in Valparaiso hospital; but I saved old Jack Rutherford of Jarrow. And when I got up and looked at my face I saw that it was not in the nature of things that I could ever ask a lass to have me. So I just stayed away and made believe that—that I had changed my mind."

The man pauses. He is not glib of speech, though quick enough at sea. As he takes up the little teapot and shakes it roundwise, after the manner of the galley, his great brown hand shakes too.

"I would not have come back here," he goes on after a silence; "but the Mallard was ordered to the Tyne. And a chap must do his duty by his shipmates and his owners. And I thought it would be safe—after eleven years. When I saw the old place and smelt the smell of the old woman's frying-pan, I could not get past the door. But I hung around, looking to make sure there were no bairns playing on the floor. I have only come in, lass, to pass the time of day and to tell you ye're a free woman."

He is not looking at her. He seems to find that difficult. So he does not see the queer little smile—rather sadder, in itself, than tears.

"And you stayed away eleven years—because o' THAT?" says the woman, slowly.

"Ay, you know, lass, I'm no great hand at the preaching and Bibles and the like; but it seems pretty clear that them who's working things did not think it fit that we should marry. And so it was sent. I got to think it so in time—least, I think it's that sometimes. And no woman would like to say, 'That's my man—him with only half a face.' So I just stayed away."

"All for that?" asks the woman, her face, which is still, pretty and round and rosy, working convulsively.

"Ay, lass."

"Then, honey," she cries softly, "you dinna understand us women!"



THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN



"Yes, mother, he will come. Of course he will come!" And the girl turned her drawn and anxious young face towards the cottage door, just as if her blind mother could see the action.

It is probable that the old woman divined the longing glance from the change in the girl's tone, for she, too, half turned towards the door. It was a habit these two women had acquired. They constantly looked towards the door for the arrival of one who never came through the long summer days, through the quiet winter evenings; moreover, they rarely spoke of other things, this arrival was the topic of their lives. And now the old woman's life was drawing to a close, as some lives do, without its object. She herself felt it, and her daughter knew it.

There was in both of them a subtle sense of clinging. It was hard to die without touching the reward of a wondrous patience. It was cruel to deprive the girl of this burden, for in most burdens there is a safeguard, in all a duty, and in some the greatest happiness allotted to human existence.

It was no new thing, this waiting for the scapegrace son; the girl had grown up to it, for she would not know her brother should she meet him in the street. Since sight had left the old mother's eyes, she had fed her heart upon this hope.

He had left them eighteen years before in a fit of passionate resentment against his father, whose only fault had been too great an indulgence for the son of his old age. Nothing had been too good for dear Stephen—hardly anything had been good enough. Educated at a charity school himself, the simple old clergyman held the mistaken view that no man can be educated above his station.

There are some people who hold this view still, but they cannot do so much longer. Strikes, labour troubles, and the difficulties of domestic service, so called gentleman farmers, gentleman shopkeepers and lady milliners—above all, a few colonies peopled by University failures, will teach us in time that to educate our sons above their station is to handicap them cruelly in the race of life.

Stephen Leach was one of the early victims to this craze. His father, having risen by the force of his own will and the capabilities of his own mind from the People to the Church, held, as such men do, that he had only to give his son a good education to ensure his career in life. So everything—even to the old parson's sense of right and wrong—was sacrificed to the education of Stephen Leach at public school and University. Here he met and selected for his friends youths whose futures were ensured, and who were only passing through the formula of an education so that no one could say they were unfit for the snug Government appointment, living, or inheritance of a more substantial sort, that might be waiting for them. Stephen acquired their ways of life without possessing their advantages, and the consequence was something very nearly approaching to ruin for the little country rectory. Not having been a University man himself, the rector did not know that at Oxford or Cambridge, as in the army, one may live according to one's taste. Stephen Leach had expensive tastes, and he unscrupulously traded on his father's ignorance. He was good-looking, and had a certain brilliancy of manner which "goes down" well at the 'Varsity. Everything was against him, and at last the end came. At last the rector's eyes were opened, and when a narrow-minded man's eyes are once opened he usually becomes stony at heart.

Stephen Leach left England, and before he landed in America his father had departed on a longer journey. The ne'er-do-well had the good grace to send back the little sums of money saved by his mother in her widowhood, and gradually his letters ceased. It was known that he was in Chili, and there was war going on there, and yet the good old lady's faith never wavered.

"He will come, Joyce," she would say; "he will surely come."

And somehow it came to be an understood thing that he was to come in the afternoon when they were all ready for him—when Joyce had clad her pretty young form in a dark dress, and when the old lady was up and seated in her chair by the fire in winter, by the door in summer. They had never imagined his arrival at another time. It would not be quite the same should he make a mistake and come in the morning, before Joyce had got the house put right.

Yet, he never came. A greater infirmity came instead, and at last Joyce suggested that her mother should not get up in bad weather. They both knew what this meant, but the episode passed as others do, and Mrs. Leach was bedridden. Still she said -

"He will come, Joyce! He will surely come."

And the girl would go to the window and draw aside the curtain, looking down the quiet country road towards the village.

"Yes, mother, he will come!" was her usual answer; and one day she gave a little exclamation of surprise and almost of fear.

"Mother," she exclaimed, "there is some one coming along the road."

The old lady was already sitting up in bed, staring with her sightless orbs towards the window.

Thus they waited. The man stopped opposite the cottage, and the two women heard the latch of the gate. Then Joyce, turning, saw that her mother had fainted. But it was only momentary. By the time she reached the bed her mother had recovered consciousness.

"Go," said the old lady, breathlessly; "go and let him in yourself."

Downstairs, on the doorstep, the girl found a tall man of thirty or thereabouts with a browner face than English suns could account for. He looked down into her eager eyes with a strange questioning wonder.

"Am I too late?" he asked in a voice which almost seemed to indicate a hope that it might be so.

"No, Stephen," she answered. "But mother cannot live much longer. You are just in time."

The young man made a hesitating little movement with his right hand and shuffled uneasily on the clean stone step. He was like an actor called suddenly upon the stage having no knowledge of his part. The return of this prodigal was not a dramatic success. No one seemed desirous of learning whether he had lived upon husks or otherwise and with whom he had eaten. The quiet dignity of the girl, who had remained behind to do all the work and bear all the burden seemed in some subtle manner to deprive him of any romance that might have attached itself to him. She ignored his half-proffered hand, and turning into the little passage, led the way upstairs.

Stephen Leach followed silently. He was rather large for the house, and especially for the stairs; moreover, he had a certain burliness of walk, such as is acquired by men living constantly in the open. There was a vaguely-pained look in his blue eyes, as if they had suddenly been opened to his own shortcomings. His attitude towards Joyce was distinctly apologetic.

When he followed the girl across the threshold of their mother's bedroom the old lady was sitting up in bed, holding out trembling arms towards the door.

Here Stephen Leach seemed to know better what to do. He held his mother in his arms while she sobbed and murmured out her joy. He had no words, but his arms meant more than his lips could ever have told.

It would seem that the best part of happiness is the sharing of it with some one else.

"Joyce," was the first distinct word the old lady spoke, "Joyce, he has come at last. He has come! Come here, dear. Kiss your brother. This is my firstborn—my little Steve."

The young man had sunk upon his knees at the bedside, probably because it was the most convenient position. He did not second his mother's proposal with much enthusiasm. Altogether he did not seem to have discovered much sympathy with the sister whom he had left in her cradle.

Joyce came forward and leaned over the bed to kiss her brother while the old lady's hands joined theirs. Just as her fresh young lips came within reach he turned his face aside, so that the kiss fell on barren ground on his tanned cheek.

"Joyce," continued the old lady, feverishly, "I am not afraid to die now, for Stephen is here. Your brother will take care of you, dear, when I am gone."

It was strange that Stephen had not spoken yet; and it was perhaps just as well, because there are occasions in life when men do wisely to keep silent.

"He is strong," the proud mother went on. "I can feel it. His hands are large and steady and quiet, and his arms are big and very hard."

The young man knelt upright and submitted gravely to this maternal inventory.

"Yes," she said, "I knew he would grow to be a big man. His little fingers were so strong—he hurt me sometimes. What a great moustache! I knew you had been a soldier. And the skin of your face is brown and a little rough. What is this? what is this, Stephen dear? Is this a wound?"

"Yes," answered the Prodigal, speaking for the first time. "That is a sword cut. I got that in the last war. I am a colonel in the Chilian army, or was, before I resigned."

The old lady's sightless eyes were fixed on his face, as if listening for the echo of another voice in his deep quiet tones.

"Your voice is deeper than your father's ever was," she said; and all the while her trembling fingers moved lovingly over his face, touching the deep cut from cheek-bone to jaw with soft inquiry. "This must have been very near your eye, Stephen. Promise me, dear, no more soldiering."

"I promise that," he replied, without raising his eyes.

Such was the home-coming of the Prodigal. After all, he arrived at the right moment in the afternoon, when the house was ready. It sometimes does happen so in real life, and not only in books. There is a great deal that might be altered in this world, but sometimes, by a mere chance, things come about rightly. And yet there was something wrong, something subtle, which the dying woman's duller senses failed to detect. Her son, her Stephen, was quiet, and had not much to say for himself. He apparently had the habit of taking things as they came. There was no enthusiasm, but rather a restraint in his manner, more especially towards Joyce.

The girl noticed it, but even her small experience of human kind had taught her that large, fair-skinned men are often thus. They are not "de ceux qui s'expliquent," but go through life placidly, leaving unsaid and undone many things which some think they ought to say and do.

After the first excitement of the return was over it became glaringly apparent that Stephen had arrived just in time. His mother fell into a happy sleep before sunset; and when the active young doctor came a little later in the evening he shook his head.

"Yes," he said, "I see that she is asleep and quiet—too quiet. It is a foretaste of a longer sleep; some old people have it."

For the first time Joyce's courage seemed to give way. When she had been alone she was brave enough, but now that her brother was there, woman-like, she seemed to turn to him with a sudden fear. They stood side by side near the bed; and the young doctor involuntarily watched them. Stephen had taken her hand in his with that silent sympathy which was so natural and so eloquent. He said nothing, this big, sun-tanned youth; he did not even glance down at his sister, who stood small, soft-eyed, and gentle at his side.

The doctor knew something of the history of the small family thus momentarily united, and he had always feared that if Stephen Leach did return it would only kill his mother. This, indeed, seemed to be the result about to follow.

Presently the doctor took his leave. He was a young man engaged in getting together a good practice, and in his own interest he had been forced to give up waiting for his patients to finish dying.

"I am glad you are here," he said to Stephen, who accompanied him to the door. "It would not do for your sister to be alone; this may go on for a couple of days."

It did not go on for a couple of days, but Mrs. Leach lived through that night in the same semi-comatose state. The two watchers sat in her room until supper-time, when they left their mother in charge of a hired nurse, whose services Joyce had been forced to seek.

After supper Stephen Leach seemed at last to find his tongue, and he talked in his quiet, almost gentle voice, such as some big men possess, not about himself or the past, but about Joyce and the future. In a deliberate business-like way, he proceeded to investigate the affairs of the dying woman and the prospects of her daughter; in a word, he asserted his authority as a brother, and Joyce was relieved and happy to obey him.

It is not in times of gaiety that friendships are formed, but in sorrow or suspense. During that long evening this brother and sister suddenly became intimate, more so than months of prosperous intercourse could have made them. At ten o'clock Stephen quietly insisted that Joyce should go to bed while he lay down, all dressed, on the sofa in the dining-room.

"I shall sleep perfectly; it is not the first time I have slept in my clothes," he said simply.

They went upstairs together and told the nurse of this arrangement. Joyce remained for some moments by the bedside watching her mother's peaceful sleep, and when she turned she found that Stephen had quietly slipped away. Wondering vaguely whether he had intentionally solved her difficulty as to the fraternal good-night, she went to her own room.

The next morning Mrs. Leach was fully conscious, and appeared to be stronger; nevertheless, she knew that the end was near. She called her two children to her bedside, and, turning her blind eyes towards them, spoke in broken sentences.

"I am ready now—I am ready," she said. "Dears, I am going to your father—and. . . thank God, I can tell him that I have left you together. I always knew Stephen would come back. I found it written everywhere in the Bible. Stephen—kiss me, dear!"

The man leant over the bed and kissed her.

"Ah!" she sighed, "how I wish I could see you—just once before I die. Joyce!" she added, suddenly turning to her daughter, who stood at the other side of the bed, "tell me what he is like. But—I know . . I KNOW—I feel it. Listen! He is tall and spare, like his father. His hair is black, like—like his father's—it was black before he went away. His eyes, I know, are dark—almost black. He is pale—like a Spaniard!" . . .

Joyce, looking across the bed with slow horror dawning in her face, looked into a pair of blue eyes beneath tawny hair, cut short as a soldier's hair should be. She looked upon a man big, broad, fair— English from crown to toe—and the quiet command of his lips and eyes made her say -

"Yes, mother, yes."

For some moments there was silence. Joyce stood pale and breathless, wondering what this might mean. Then the dying woman spoke again.

"Kiss me," she said. "I. . . am going. Stephen first—my firstborn! And now, Joyce. . . and now kiss each other—across the bed! I want to hear it. . . I want. . . to tell. . . your. . . father."

With a last effort she raised her hands, seeking their heads. At first Joyce hesitated, then she leant forward, and the old woman's chilled fingers pressed their lips together. That was the end.

Half an hour afterwards Joyce and this man stood facing each other in the little dining-room. He began his explanation at once.

"Stephen," he said, "was shot—out there—as a traitor. I could not tell her that! I did not mean to do this, but what else could I do?"

He paused, moved towards the door with that same strange hesitation which she had noticed on his arrival. At the door he turned, to justify himself.

"I still think," he said gravely, "that it was the best thing to do."

Joyce made no answer. The tears stood in her eyes. There was something very pathetic in the distress of this strong man, facing, as it were, an emergency of which he felt the delicacy to be beyond his cleverness to handle.

"Last night," he went on, "I made all the necessary arrangements for your future just as Stephen would have made them—as a brother might have done. I. . . he and I were brother officers in a very wild army. Your brother—was not a good man. None of us were." His hand was on the door. "He asked me to come and tell you," he added. "I shall go back now. . . ."

They stood thus: he watching her face with his honest soft blue eyes, she failing to meet his glance.

"May I come back again?" he asked suddenly.

She gave a little gasp, but made no answer.

"I will come back in six months," he announced quietly, and then he closed the door behind him.

THE END