*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74158 ***







[Illustration: "'I INTEND RESIGNING MY COMMISSION, SIR'" (_See page
15_)



  HEMMING

  THE ADVENTURER



  BY

  THEODORE ROBERTS.

  AUTHOR OF "BROTHERS OF PERIL," ETC.



  _ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. G. LEARNED._



  LONDON:
  WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
  1906.




  A Dedication
  TO ONE WHO BROUGHT
  THE COLOUR OF REALITY BACK
  TO LIFE AT A TIME WHEN LIFE WAS LIKE
  A PICTURE, AND THE FACES OF MY FRIENDS WERE
  LESS REAL THAN THE FACES OF MY DREAMING.  TO ONE
  WHOSE SWEET INTEREST IN MY STORIES MADE IT SEEM WORTH
  WHILE TO RECALL MY AIMLESS ADVENTURES.  TO ONE WHOSE
  GENTLE MINISTRATIONS TURNED A WEARY SICKNESS INTO A
  HOLIDAY, AND WIPED OUT THE MEMORY OF PAST PAIN.  TO ONE
  WHO TAUGHT ME THAT ROMANCE LIES NOT ALL IN THE MAKING
  OF NEW LANDFALLS AND THE SIGHTING OF NEW
  MOUNTAIN-TOPS.  TO HER WHO READS THIS PAGE WITH
  UNDERSTANDING, AND A QUICKENING OF
  THE PULSE, THIS STORY OF HEMMING
  THE ADVENTURER IS
  LOVINGLY DEDICATED

  1903 T. R.




  CONTENTS


  PART ONE

  CHAPTER

  I. Captain Hemming Faces a Change of Life
  II. Hemming Meets with a Strange Reception
  III. Hemming Visits the Manager of the Syndicate
  IV. The Advent of Mr. O'Rourke and His Servant
  V. The Adventurers Dispense With Mr. Nunez
  VI. Hemming Hears of the Villain
  VII. An Elderly Champion
  VIII. Hemming Undertakes a Dignified Work
  IX. O'Rourke Tells a Sad Story
  X. Lieutenant Ellis Is Concerned
  XI. Hemming Draws His Back Pay


  PART TWO

  I. The Unsuspected City
  II. The Sporting President
  III. The Post of Honour.--The Secretary's Affair
  IV. The Thing That Happened
  V. Chance in Pernambuco
  VI. Cuddlehead Decides on an Adventure
  VII. Hemming Learns Something about His Army
  VIII. Captain Santosa Visits His Superior Officer
  IX. Mr. Cuddlehead Arrives
  X. The First Shot
  XI. The Colonel's Ultimatum
  XII. O'Rourke to the Rescue
  XIII. The Unexpected Sailor
  XIV. The Attack
  XV. Rest in Pernambuco


  PART THREE

  I. The Real Girl
  II. A New Restlessness
  III. A Rolling Stone
  IV. "The Dear, Dear Witchery of Song"
  V. An Uncanny Guest
  VI. The Bachelor Uncle to the Rescue
  VII. Hemming Receives His Sailing Orders from a Master Not to Be Denied
  VIII. Hemming Would Put His Dreams To The Proof
  IX. To Part No More
  X. A New Command




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"'I intend resigning my commission, sir'" (_See page 15_)
_Frontispiece_

"Several days later Miss Travers wrote to Hemming"

"The door came in with a rending, sidelong fall"

"'I have decided, sir, to stick to scribbling'"

"At that moment Molly tripped into the room"




PART ONE



  HEMMING,
  THE ADVENTURER



CHAPTER I.

CAPTAIN HEMMING FACES A CHANGE OF LIFE

The colonel sat in Captain Hemming's room.  He looked about at the
snug furnishings, and the photographs above the chimney.  Even the
row of polished spurs on their rack against the wall, and the line of
well-shone boots and shoes at the head of the bed, could not do away
with the homelike air of the room.

"Even in Dublin, a man with something over his pay can make himself
comfortable, in seven months," mused the colonel.  Being a bachelor
himself, he liked the way things were arranged.  For instance, the
small book-shelf above the bed, with its freight of well-thumbed
volumes, tobacco-jar, and match-box, appealed to him.  He selected a
cigarette from an open box at his elbow, and, lighting it, sighed
contentedly.  In reaching back to deposit the burnt match on an
ash-tray, his hand upset a stack of folded papers and spilled them on
the floor.

"The devil!" he exclaimed, and, doubling up, scooped for the nearest.

What's this, he wondered, as a yard or two of narrow, printed matter
unrolled from his hand.  He was a stranger to galley-proofs.  He
looked at the top of the upper strip, and saw, in heavy, black type,
"The Colonel and the Lady."  Then he settled back in the chair,
crossed his thin, tight-clad legs, and smoothed the proof.  Ten
minutes later Hemming's orderly entered and mended the fire; but the
colonel did not look up.  The orderly retired.  The clock on the
chimneypiece ticked away the seconds all unheeded.  The shadows
lengthened at the windows, and at last the colonel straightened
himself, and replaced the papers.  He smiled.

"Sly old Hemming," he remarked, and laughed outright.  "He shouldn't
show us up like that," he said, "but it's a good yarn.  Wonder if he
will lend it to me to finish to-night?"

Just then Captain Hemming entered.

By this time the room was dusk with the twilight of early spring.  He
did not sight the colonel immediately, and, going over to a wardrobe,
hung up his cap and greatcoat.  He was in "undress" uniform--his blue
serge tunic somewhat shabby, but his riding-breeches and high,
spurred boots smart and new.  The colonel coughed.

Though the captain's greeting was prompt and polite, it did not hide
his surprise.

"I dropped in to speak about Tomilson--he seems in a bad way," the
other explained.  Tomilson was a full private--in both rank and
condition.

Hemming advised leniency in this case.  He had a soft heart for the
men, in spite of his abrupt diction, and the uncompromising glare of
his single eye-glass.  When the commanding officer was about to take
his departure, the captain asked him to wait a minute.  His manner
was as cool as ever.

"I intend resigning my commission, sir.  I decided on the course some
days ago, and meant to speak to you after parade to-morrow," he said.

"Bless me," exclaimed the colonel, "what the devil have you been up
to?"

The other smiled,--a somewhat thin smile,--and replied that he had
not disgraced the regiment, or done anything low.  "But I'm down to
my pay again," he exclaimed, "and I can't live on that."

"Why not?  Have you ever tried?" inquired the colonel.

Hemming did not answer the question, but waited, with his hands
behind his back, and his face toward the fast darkening windows.

"I'm sorry for it," said the older man, at last.  "You are a good
officer,--forgive my saying so,--and--and the mess swears by you.  I
hope you have suffered no serious misfortune."

The captain laughed wanly.

"It seems rather serious to me," he replied.  "I've come to the end
of my little pile."

"The second, I believe," remarked the colonel.

Hemming nodded.

"It beats me," exclaimed his superior, and looked as if an
explanation would be welcome.

"You would understand, sir, if you were as big a fool as I have been.
Good nature, without common business sense to guide it, gets away
with more money than viciousness."

He stared gravely at the reclining colonel.  "At last I have learned
my lesson," he concluded, "and it is this--put not your trust in
cads."

The colonel laughed uneasily, and quitted the room without asking for
the loan of the proof-sheets.  Hemming sat down in the vacated chair.
His face now wore a pleasanter expression.

"Thank God, I'm not afraid of work," he said, "but may the devil fly
away with that cad Penthouse.  How can a blood-relation of Molly's be
such a sneaking, mealy-mouthed little cur?  Now, while I am lying
here winged, thanks to my childish generosity and his beastliness, he
is skipping around in London, on two months' leave.  Herbert Hemming
is done with the ways of lambs and idiots."  Jumping to his feet, he
went to the door and shouted for his man.  A few minutes later, with
the candles glowing softly on sword and photograph, spur and
book-back, he dressed for dinner.

That night the mess found him more talkative than usual.  But he left
early, for his own quarters.  The groups in the anteroom thinned
gradually, as the men went about their various concerns, some to
their rooms, and some to the town, and one across the square to the
colonel's quarters, where the colonel's youngest sister awaited him.
This sister was a thorn in the colonel's flesh.  She would not let
him smoke his pipe in the drawing-room (though he was sure she smoked
cigarettes there), and he heartily hoped his junior major would marry
her.  The junior major hoped so too, and, with this hope in his
breast, took his departure, leaving Spalding, a subaltern, and Major
O'Grady alone by the piano.

O'Grady balanced his smouldering cigarette on the edge of the
music-stand, and strummed a few erratic bars.

"The other chaps must have suspected something," said Spalding.  "I
wondered why they all cleared out."

"What are ye doing here, ye impudent young divil?  Should think ye'd
skeedaddle down-town, now that Penthouse is in London, and ye've got
a chance with the lady," cried the stout Irish major.  The
subaltern's boyish face took on an ugly expression.

"Penthouse--that bounder," he sneered.

"I must admit that his manners are a trifle airy," returned O'Grady,
"but the same can be truly said of most subs of this glorious age."

"I'm not objecting to his manners, major, and I'm not defending my
own," said Spalding.  "I'm simply naming him a bounder."

O'Grady took up his cigarette, and turned his back on the keyboard.

"What are ye kicking about?" he inquired.

"Well," replied Spalding, anxiously examining the ceiling, "I happen
to know things about him."

"Ye're a gossip, me boy, that's what ye are," cried the major, "and
of all contemptible things, the worst is a male gossip.  What do ye
happen to know about him, me boy?"

A faint smile played across the lieutenant's upturned face; but the
impatient major did not notice it.

"To begin with, he's some sort of cousin to a Miss Travers, an
English girl whom Hemming is in love with," said Spalding.

"Then you object to him on purely social grounds," interrupted the
Irishman.

"Oh, shut up, and let me tell my tale.  Social grounds be shot--Miss
Travers is daughter of a lord bish-hop.  Penthouse is son of a
baronet.  What I'm getting at is that good old Hemming, just because
this chap is related to his girl, has looked after him like a
dry-nurse for more than a year.  That is right enough.  But--and this
is not known by any one but me--Hemming backed a lot of his paper,
and for the last two months he has been paying the piper.  Once upon
a time, in the memory of man, Hemming had some money, but I'll eat my
helmet if he has any now."

"How d'ye know all this?" asked O'Grady, letting his fat cigarette
smoulder its life away unheeded.  Spalding touched his eyes lightly
with his finger-tips.

"Saw," he said.

The major gave vent to his feelings in muttered oaths, all the while
keeping an observant eye upon his companion.

"I'll wager now that Hemming has some good old Irish blood in him,"
he remarked.

"Why do you think that?" asked Spalding, deliberately yawning.

"His generosity leads me to think so.  There are other officers of
infantry regiments who'd be better off to-day, but for their kind
hearts and Irish blood."  The major sighed windily as he made this
statement.

"Methinks you mean Irish whiskey," retorted Spalding.  With dignity
O'Grady arose from the piano-stool.

"I'll not listen to any more of your low gossip," he said, and
started for the door, in a hurry to carry the news to any one he
might find at home.

"You needn't mention my name, sir," called Spalding, over his
shoulder.  His superior officer left the room without deigning a
reply.




CHAPTER II.

HEMMING MEETS WITH A STRANGE RECEPTION

Herbert Hemming sat alone in his room, while his brother officers
sought their pleasure in divers companies.  His writing-table was
drawn close to the fire.  His scarlet mess-jacket made a vivid spot
of colour, in the softly illuminated room.  He was busily occupied
with the proofs of "The Colonel and the Lady," when his man rapped at
the door and entered.

"Nothing more," said the captain, without looking up.  The soldier
saluted, but did not go.  Presently his master's attention was
awakened by the uneasy creaking of his boots.

"Well, what do you want?"

"Me mother is very ill, sir."

"I'm not a doctor, Malloy."

"I wasn't thinkin' of insultin' you, sir."

Hemming sighed, and laid down his pen.

"I have found you a satisfactory servant," he said, "also a frightful
liar."

"I must confess to you, sir," replied the man, "that I was lyin' last
month about me father,--he's been dead as St. Pathrick this seven
year,--but to-night I'm tellin' you the truth, sir, so help me--"

"Never mind that," interrupted Hemming.

Malloy was silent.

"So your mother is very ill?" continued the captain.

"Yes, sir,--locomotive attacks, sir."

"And poor, I take it?"

"Yes, sir,--four bob a week."

Hemming felt in his pockets and drew out a sovereign.

"Sorry it's so little," he said, "but if you give me her address
to-morrow I'll call and see her."

"God bless you, sir," said the man.  He took the money, and hesitated
beside the table.

Hemming glanced at him inquiringly.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, it beats me how you knows when I'm lyin'
and when I'm tellin' the truth," exclaimed the orderly.

"I'm learning things by experience.  Good night, Malloy."

Alone again, Hemming made short work of his proofs.  After sealing
them into a yellow envelope, and inscribing thereon the address of a
big New York weekly (whose editor had proved partial to his sketches
and stories of "doings" in the Imperial Army), he produced some of
the regimental stationery and began a letter to Miss Travers.  It was
no easy undertaking--the writing of this particular letter.  After
struggling for some minutes with the first sentence, he leaned back
in his chair and fell into retrospection.  His age was now
twenty-nine years.  He had done with Sandhurst at twenty-one, and had
been in the army ever since; had seen more than his share of foreign
service, and two seasons of border-scrapping in Northern India.  He
had gone ahead in his chosen profession, despite a weakness for
reading poetry in bed and writing articles descriptive of people and
things he knew.  During his father's lifetime his allowance (though
he was but a third son) was ample, and even enabled him to play polo,
and shortly after his father's death an almost unknown great-aunt had
left him a modest little sum--not much of a fortune, but a very
comfortable possession.  Two years previous to his present troubles
he had fallen in love.  So had the girl.  A year ago he had proposed
and been accepted.  He had, for her sake, fathered a reckless,
impecunious subaltern, by name Penthouse, lending him money and
endorsing his notes, and now he was stripped bare to his pay.  If he
had never met the girl, things would not look so bad, for certain
papers and magazines had begun to buy his stories.  By sitting up to
it and working hard, he felt that he could make more as a writer than
as a soldier.  But the idea of giving up the girl sent a sickening
chill through his heart.  Surely she would understand, and cheer him
up the new path.  But it was with a heavy heart that he returned to
the writing of the letter.  Slowly, doggedly he went through with it,
telling of his loss of fortune, through helping a person whom he
would not name, and of his hopes and plans for the future.  He told
of the adventurous position he had accepted, but the day before, with
an American Newspaper Syndicate--a billet that would necessitate his
almost immediate departure for Greece.  The pain of his
disappointment crept, all unnoticed by him, into the style of his
writing, and made the whole letter sound strained and unnatural.

By the time the letter was sealed and ready for the mail, Hemming was
tired out.  He flung himself on the bed, unhooked the collar of his
mess-jacket (they hooked at the collar a few years ago), and,
lighting his pipe, lay for some time in unhappy half-dreaming.  He
knew, for, at the last, young Penthouse had not been careful to hide
his cloven foot, that he might just as well expect another great-aunt
to leave him another lump of money as to look for any reimbursement
from the source of his misfortune.  The fellow was bad, he mused, but
just how bad his friends and the world must find out for themselves.
Of course he would give Molly a hint to that effect, when he saw her.
He had not done so in the letter, because it had been hard enough to
write, without that.

Hemming went on duty next day, wearing, to the little world of the
regiment, his usual alert and undisturbed expression.  Shortly before
noon he wrote and forwarded a formal resignation of his commission.
By dinner-time the word that he had given up the service had reached
every member of the mess.  Spalding's story had also made the rounds,
in one form or another (thanks to Major O'Grady, that righteous enemy
to gossip), and the colonel alone was ignorant of it.  During dinner
little was said about Hemming's sudden move.  All felt it more or
less keenly; the colonel grieved over the loss of so capable an
officer, and the others lamented the fact that a friend and a
gentleman was forced to leave their mess because one cad happened to
be a member of it.  Hemming felt their quiet sympathy.  Even the
waiters tending him displayed an increased solicitousness.

Hemming remained in Dublin a week after resigning his commission.  He
had a good deal of business to attend to, and some important letters
to receive--one from the American Syndicate, containing a check, and
at least two from Miss Travers.  It had been the lady's custom, ever
since their engagement, to write him twice a week.  Three were now
overdue.  The American letter came, with its terse and satisfactory
typewritten instructions and narrow slip of perforated paper, but the
English missive failed to put in an appearance.  He tried not to
worry during the day, and, being busy, succeeded fairly well, but at
night, being defenceless, care visited him even in his dreams.
Sometimes he saw the woman he loved lying ill--too ill to hold a pen.
Sometimes he saw her with a new unsuspected look in her eyes, turning
an indifferent face upon his supplications.  He lost weight in those
few days, and Spalding (who, with the others, thought his only
trouble the loss of his money) said that but for the work he had in
getting a fair price for his pony, his high-cart, and his extra pairs
of riding-boots, he would have blown his brains out.

On his last night in Dublin his old regiment gave a dinner in his
honour.  Civilians were there, and officers from every branch of the
service, and when Major O'Grady beheld Hemming (which did not happen
until late in the dinner), clothed in the unaccustomed black and
white, with his medal with two clasps pinned on his coat, he tried to
sing something about an Irish gentleman, and burst into tears.

"There's not a drop of the craychure in his blood," said Spalding,
across the table.

"But he's the boy with the warm heart," whimpered the major.

"And the open hand," said the subaltern.

"The same has been the ruin of many of us," replied O'Grady.

It was well for Lieutenant Penthouse that he did not return to Dublin
in time to attend that dinner.

Hemming knew a score of private houses in London where he would be
welcome for a night or a month, but in his bitter mood he ignored the
rights of friendship and went to a small hotel in an unfashionable
part of the town.  As soon as he had changed from his rough tweeds
into more suitable attire, he started, in a cab, for the Travers
house.  The bishop was dead, and the widow, preferring London to
Norfolk, spent every season in town.  Hemming was sure of finding
some one at home, though he trembled at the memory of his evil
dreams.  Upon reaching the house he dismissed the cab.  The maid who
opened the door recognized him, and showed him into the drawing-room.

"I hope every one is well," he said, pausing on the threshold.

"Yes, sir," replied the maid, looking surprised at the question.  She
had seen Captain Hemming many times, but never before had he
addressed her.

It seemed to Hemming that he waited hours in the narrow, heavily
furnished room.  He could not sit still.  At last he got to his feet,
and, crossing to a corner table, examined the photographs of some
people he knew.  He wondered where his had gone to--the full-length
portrait by Bettel, in field-uniform.  He looked for it everywhere,
an uncomfortable curiosity pricking him.  Turning from his search, he
saw Miss Travers watching him.  He took a step toward her, and
stopped short.  Her face was white, her eyes were dark with the
shadow of pain.  Something had put out the familiar illumination that
love had lighted so gloriously.

"Molly," whispered the man.  His hands, extended at first sight of
her, dropped impotently at his side.  "For God's sake, what is the
matter?" he cried.  His honest gray eyes asked the question as
plainly.  Hers wavered, and looked beyond him in a pitiful, strained
gaze.

"Why do you ask?  You surely know," she said.

He could not speak for a moment.  His brain, in a whirl of
apprehension, groped for some clue whereby it might find
understanding.

"I know nothing," he said, at last, "save that I am horribly afraid
of something I do not understand--of your silence and the change in
you."  He paused for a moment, scanning her averted face.  "And now I
am a poor man," he added.

At that a faint red stole into her cheeks.  He drew nearer and laid a
hand quickly and tenderly upon her shoulder.

"Dear girl, can that weigh against me?" he asked, scarce above his
breath.  She moved from his touch with a gesture that sent the blood
ringing back to brain and heart.  The madness of the righteous anger
ebbed, leaving him cool and observant.

"I must beg your pardon for intruding, and now I shall go," he said.
"It was well worth the loss of a few thousands of pounds--to find the
real nature of your love."

He passed her with squared shoulders and sneering lip, and strode
briskly toward the door.

"Wait," she cried, "I do not understand you."  Her voice contained a
new note.

He turned on the threshold and bowed.

"You have known me long enough," he said.

"Yes," she replied.  He stood in the doorway and stared at her.

"If I am dreaming, then wake me, dear.  Surely you love me?"

His voice was tense.  He moved as if to approach her again.

"I have learned of your other life--of your living lie," she cried,
weakly.

"My other life," he repeated, smiling gently.

"Yes," she said, "from my cousin.  It was his duty.  Tell me it is
not true."

He saw the tears in her eyes.  He marked the supplication in her
voice.  But he did not move from the threshold.

"From Penthouse?" he inquired.

She did not answer him.  She stood with one hand raised to her
breast, and a world of entreaty in her gaze.

"I thought," said Hemming, coldly, "that you loved me.  I thought
that when a woman loved the man who loves her, that she also trusted
him.  But I am very ignorant, considering my age."

He took his hat and stick from the rack in the hall, and let himself
out of the front door.  He stood for a few seconds on the steps and
looked up and down the street.  A cab rolled up to the curb.  After
drawing on his gloves and adjusting his monocle, he stepped into the
cab and quietly gave the name of his club to the man behind.

The cab bowled along the quiet, respectable street.

"Stop here," cried Hemming, when they had reached the corner, and as
the horse slid to a standstill he stepped out, and went up to a
heavily dressed young man on the pavement.  The stranger did not see
him, and held on in the direction from which Hemming had just come.

"Excuse me--a word," said Hemming.

The other halted.  His heavy, handsome face whitened under its
unhealthy skin.

"Ah, how do, Hemming," he said.

Hemming took the extended hand.  They stood about the same height.
Hemming retained his grip of the other's hand.

"I am somewhat pressed for time," he said, "so you'll forgive me if I
begin immediately."

He jerked Mr. Penthouse toward him with a downward wrench of his
right arm, and, with his stick in his left hand, he administered a
short and severe caning.

"I'm a-waitin' for you, guvnor," called the cabby.

Leaving Mr. Penthouse seated upon the pavement, dazed and
blasphemous, Hemming returned to the cab and drove away.




CHAPTER III.

HEMMING VISITS THE MANAGER OF THE SYNDICATE

Hemming's club was a favourite resort of military and naval men
stationed near town, or home on leave.  He met half a dozen whom he
knew more or less intimately.  All had something to say about his
change of career, but presently he escaped them, and sought a quiet
corner of the reading-room, where he could smoke and stare at the
latest papers.  Reading was out of the question.  He might as well
have tried to sing.  Several times he was ready to leave the club and
return to Miss Travers, but the memory of the movement she had made
when he had touched her shoulder kept him crushed in his chair.  He
dined at the club, and drank more than was his custom.  The sound
wine brought colour back to his cheeks.

A youngster, who had been stationed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a
year past, came over to his table with an American magazine in his
hand.

"Do you know, old chap, your stories are quite the rage in Halifax,"
he said.  "I notice, though, that the fellows here do not know what
you are up to at all.  One soon leaves the trick of reading the
magazines on the other side."

This unexpected word for his literary work cheered Hemming
considerably.  He invited the youth to seat himself and have a cigar.
Soon he found himself telling his admirer something of his
aspirations.

When Anderson of the Royal Engineers came in, he found Hemming and
the lieutenant on leave from Canada still talking across the table.
Anderson was Hemming's senior by some four or five years, but they
had been friends since childhood.  After their greeting, Anderson
said:

"Have you seen Penthouse?"

"Yes, I met him about five o'clock," replied Hemming.

Anderson's face brightened, and he slapped his knee with his broad
hand.

"I ran across him in an apothecary's shop a few hours ago, and, as I
had just heard of your arrival, I wondered if you had met him," he
said.  "You see," he continued, "I have had my eye on him of late.
The Travers and I are still very good friends, you know."

"This sounds very interesting," broke in the lieutenant.  "What is it
all about?"

"I hardly know myself," answered Hemming.

The lieutenant wished them good night, shook hands cordially with
both, and, after assuring Hemming that he would watch eagerly for
everything he wrote, left the dining-room.

"Williams seems a good sort," remarked Hemming.

Anderson did not answer.  He looked as if he were thinking unusually
hard.

"I suppose you'll be in town for a while," he said.

"I leave to-morrow for Greece.  I'm a newspaper correspondent now,"
replied Hemming.

"You must stay a few days," said the engineer.  "A few days will do
it.  You have no right to fly off the handle like that."

"Like what?" asked the other.

"My dear boy, I have known for a week just how it would be, and now I
am in rather a hole myself," said Anderson.

"Have you been living a double life?" inquired Hemming, with a sneer.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed the lusty sapper, "do you mean to
say?--but no, I only told the lady that Penthouse was a rotten little
liar.  Strong language, I must admit."

Hemming laughed shortly.

"You must not trouble yourself too much, Dicky, for it's really not
worth while," he said.

A little later Hemming excused himself to his friend on the plea that
he had to return to his hotel, and write some letters.

"I am my own master no longer," he said.

"I think you are just beginning," replied Anderson, drily.

Hemming looked into the future, saw his body journeying, vagrant as
the wind, and his hand at a hundred adventures, but never an hour of
freedom.  He went down the wide steps and into the street with hell
and longing in his heart.

Hemming spent two weeks in Greece.  He wrote a few descriptive
stories for his syndicate, and then crossed into Turkey, where he was
offered a commission.  He wired that fighting was certain.  The
syndicate thought otherwise, and called him across the world to see
or make trouble in South America.  He cursed their stupidity and
started, spending only a few hours in England, and taking ship in
Liverpool for New York.  Arriving in that city, he and his
possessions (and he carried a full outfit) journeyed in a cab to an
old and respectable hotel on Broadway.  The fare he had to pay opened
his eyes.  But what could he do beyond staring the cabby out of
countenance with his baleful, glaring eye-glass?  At the hotel, they
were kind enough to take him for a duke in disguise.  Next morning he
found his way to the offices of the New York News Syndicate, in a
high gray building on Fulton Street.  He scrambled into one of the
great caged elevators, close on the heels of a stout gentleman in a
yellow spring overcoat and silk hat.  The lift was lighted by several
small electric bulbs.  The air was warm, and heavy with the scent of
stale cigarette smoke.

"New York News Syndicate," said Hemming to the attendant.

"Third floor," said the man, and up they shot and stopped.  The iron
grating was rolled back.  Hemming stepped out into a cool,
white-floored hall, and, turning, found the stout gentleman at his
heels.

"I think you are Captain Hemming," said the stranger, "and I am quite
sure I am Benjamin Dodder."

"Ah! the manager of the syndicate," exclaimed Hemming, waggling Mr.
Dodder's extended hand, and looking keenly into his wide,
clean-shaven face.  Dodder was a much younger man than his figure
would lead one to suppose.  Hemming thought his face far too heavy
for his bright, good-natured brown eyes.

"I got in last night, and came 'round for orders," explained Hemming.

"That was good of you," replied the manager, looking gratified.  He
led the way through several large rooms, where clerks and
stenographers were hard at work, to his private office.  He paused at
the door, and turning, said to a clerk with a glaring red necktie and
beautifully parted hair: "Ask Mr. Wells to step into my room when he
comes.  Tell him Captain Herbert Hemming has arrived."  A dozen keen,
inquiring faces were lifted from desk and machine, and turned toward
the new correspondent.

Within the manager's office were expensively upholstered chairs,
leather-topped tables, polished bookcases, and half a dozen admirably
chosen engravings, and above the grate many photographs, with
signatures scrawled across them.  The carpet underfoot was soft and
thick.

"Try this chair, sir," invited Mr. Dodder.

Hemming sank into it, and balanced his hat and stick on his knees;
Mr. Dodder snatched them from him and placed them on his table.  Then
he pulled off his coat and expanded his chest.

"Now I begin to feel like working," he remarked, with youthful gusto.

"What an extraordinary chap," thought Hemming.

Dodder opened a drawer in his table, and took out a box of cigars.
Hemming recognized the label, and remembered that they cost, in
London, three shillings apiece by the hundred.

"Have a smoke.  They're not half bad," said the manager, extending
the box.

The Englishman lit a weed, and felt that it was time to begin
business.

"Why did you recall me from Greece?" he asked.  "They are sure to
stand up to Turkey, unless all signs fail."

This straightforward question seemed to catch the manager unawares.
He rolled his cigar about between his white fingers, and crossed and
uncrossed his legs several times before he answered.

"It's this way," he began, and paused to glance at the closed door.
From the door his eyes turned to Hemming.  "We believe as you do," he
said, "but another man wanted the job.  He left here three days ago."

As Hemming had nothing to say to that, Dodder continued: "The other
chap has been with us five or six years, and, though he is a good
writer, he knows nothing of war.  You were my choice, but Devlin
happens to be Wells's brother-in-law.  I was up against it all right,
so I slid off as easy as I could."

"Thank you all the same," said Hemming.  "Now tell me what you want
done in South America."

"We want you to start in Yucatan," replied Dodder, "or somewhere
along there, and travel, with a nigger or two, to any part of the
country that promises copy.  If you hear of a revolution anywhere, go
hunt it out.  Use the wire when you have news, but for the rest of it
write good, full stories in your usual style.  Why, captain, have you
any idea how many newspapers, in this country and Canada, printed
each of those stories of yours from Greece and Turkey?"

Hemming shook his head.

"Twenty-six, no less," said the manager.  "I believe you would prove
a paying investment if we marooned you on Anticosti," he added.

"I am glad you like my stuff," answered Hemming, "and as for
Anticosti, why, I believe one could make some interesting copy there."

"You must try it one of these days," said Dodder.

At that moment, a thin, undersized man entered the room, without the
formality of knocking.  He walked with a slight limp in his left
foot.  Dodder introduced him to Hemming as Mr. Wells, the syndicate's
treasurer, and a partner in the concern.  Wells gave the
correspondent a nerveless handshake.

"Glad to meet you," he said, and turned to the manager with an air of
inquiry.

It was clear to the Englishman that Dodder was not thoroughly at ease
in his partner's company.  He returned to his cigar and his seat with
a suggestion of "by your leave" in his air.

"I think we shall let Captain Hemming start south as soon as he
likes," he said.

"It's a pleasure trip, is it?" remarked Wells, with his hands in his
pockets, and a casual eye on the Englishman.

Hemming stared, his cigar half-raised to his lips.  Dodder flushed.

"Then Captain Hemming shall start day after to-morrow," he said, in a
soothing voice.  Wells paid no attention to this remark.

"I want you to send in more copy.  You might let us have extra
stories from each place, under another name.  We could use them," he
said to Hemming.  The monocle held him in its unwinking regard for
several seconds.  Then the Englishman spoke:

"I wish you to understand me from the start," he said.  "When I was
in the service of my country, I was perfectly willing to do one man's
work, or three men's work, for the pay that I got, because it was a
matter of sentiment with me, and because I could afford to do it.
But now, if I do two men's work, as you suggest, I draw double pay.
Another thing, I shall take my orders from one man, or I shall take
no orders at all.  Mr. Dodder is my man for choice."

It was evident that this speech of the new correspondent's threw
Dodder into a flurry, and left Wells aghast.  Hemming sat in his
comfortable chair, and calmly smoked his excellent cigar.  At last
Wells found his voice.

"I think the less I have to do with this man, the better," he said,
and left the room.  When the door shut behind him, Dodder sighed with
relief.

"Thank God that's over," he said, and immediately expanded to his
former genial self.

"What is the matter with him?" asked Hemming, mildly.

"Guess he was born that way," replied the manager, "and he really
doesn't know what an impression he gives.  He has a great head for
business."

"I should judge so," said Hemming.

Dodder laughed.  "Now pull up your chair and we'll make your plans,"
he said, straightening his bulky legs under the table.  They worked
busily with maps and note-books for over an hour.  At the end of that
time a clerk entered with a bunch of letters and manuscripts.  One of
the letters was for Hemming.  It had been readdressed and forwarded
half a dozen times; and after all it proved to be nothing more
important than a meandering scrawl from Major O'Grady.  "We keep your
memory green, dear boy," wrote the major, and much more in the same
vein.  But a crooked postscript proved of interest.  It said that
Penthouse was back in Dublin, and was going to the bow-wows at a
fearful pace.

Hemming completed his arrangements with the syndicate, and, returning
to his hotel, lunched solidly on underdone steak, French fried
potatoes, a bottle of ale, a jam tart, and coffee.  Love might
display clay feet.  Wells might be as rude as the devil, and
Penthouse might go to the devil, but Herbert Hemming did not intend
setting forth on his affairs with an empty stomach.  The world was a
rotten enough place without that.  He consumed three cigarettes over
his coffee, in a leisurely manner, and by the time he had left his
table by the window the great dining-room was empty.  He spent the
rest of the day wandering about the city, conquering a desire to
write to Miss Travers.  He dined at an Italian restaurant, and went
early to bed.  By nine next morning, he and his traps were aboard a
little south-bound steamer.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ADVENT OF MR. O'ROURKE AND HIS SERVANT

The company of the _Laura_ was small and undistinguished.  The
captain was a Nova Scotian, big and red, who had, once upon a time,
skippered a full-rigged ship, and who still sighed at the memory of
it as he looked along the narrow, dirty decks of his present craft.
The mate was a New Yorker, with a master's certificate and a head
full of stories of the prowess of the American Navy.  The chief
engineer had once been a good man in his profession, but the whiskey
of his mother country had surely and slowly brought him down to his
present berth.  The half-dozen passengers were of little interest to
Hemming, and the days dragged for him, sickening with memories.  In
self-defence he reverted to fiction, and even attempted verse.

One morning, in the Gulf of Mexico, the _Laura_ was signalled by an
open boat with a rubber blanket for sail.  The engines slowed.
Hemming was on the bridge at the time, and turned the captain's glass
upon the little craft.

"What do you make of it, sir?" inquired the skipper, from the door of
the tiny chart-room below.

"She looks like a ship's boat," replied Hemming.  "The sail is rigged
square, with a boat-hook and an oar for yards, and has a hole in the
middle; it's a poncho, I think.  There's a nigger forward, waving a
shirt, and a white man aft, smoking."

The captain hurried up to the bridge and took the glass.  After
aiming it at the bobbing stranger, he turned to Hemming.

"My boat," he said, "and the same damn fool aboard her."

"Your boat?" inquired Hemming.

The mariner glared, with angry eyes, across the glinting water.
Suddenly his face cleared.  "I win," he cried.  "I bet him ten
dollars he'd have to get out inside six weeks, and by cracky, so he
has!"

"Who is he?" asked the Englishman.

"He's Mr. O'Rourke, the man who's lookin' for trouble," replied the
big Nova Scotian.

"What's he doing with your boat, and why didn't he take a decent sail
while he was about it?" Hemming asked.

"He had a decent enough sail when I saw him last," explained the
skipper, "and I don't mean to say that he's a thief.  He paid for the
boat, right enough, though he bargained pretty close.  He wanted to
see more of Cuba, you know, but the Spaniards wouldn't have anything
more to do with him, because of something he wrote, so he just got me
to steam in five weeks ago, and let him off in the port life-boat.
Now he's back again, with a nigger."

"What's his game?" asked Hemming.

"Search me,--unless it's just trouble," said the mariner, returning
the glass and hurrying down to the deck.

By this time the _Laura_ was rolling lazily.  The captain ordered a
man to stand ready with a line; the poncho was lowered, aboard the
adventurous rowboat, and the nigger manned the oars; the white man in
the stern sheets stood up and raised his Panama hat, and the
passengers along the _Laura's_ rail replied with cheers.  The captain
leaned far over the side.  "What about that bet?" he shouted.  The
stranger drew his hand from a pocket of his ragged ducks and held
something aloft,--something crumpled and green.  Then he regained his
soaring seat, and gripped the tiller.

The captain lifted a beaming countenance to Hemming on the bridge.
"That's the first white man who ever got out of Cuba with ten
dollars," he bawled.  Evidently the captain did not consider
Spaniards as white men.

The line was thrown, and went circling and unfolding through the air
until it fell into the boat.  The ladder was unlashed and dropped
over the _Laura's_ side.  In a minute O'Rourke and the pacifico were
on the deck, and in another minute the port life-boat was back on its
davits.  O'Rourke was warmly welcomed aboard.  Even the chief
engineer appeared from below to shake his hand.  The captain hurried
him to the chart-room, and beckoned to Hemming from the door.  When
Hemming entered, he found the newcomer lying full length on the
locker, with a glass of whiskey and water in his left hand, and the
other under his head.  He got stiffly to his feet upon the
Englishman's entrance, and, after shaking hands cordially, lay down
again.

"Now what do you think of that?" queried the skipper, glancing from
O'Rourke to the other.

O'Rourke laughed good-naturedly, but with a note of weariness.  "I
must confess it was not exactly a Sunday-school picnic," he said,
"and a chap's insides get fearfully squirmy on a diet of sugar-cane
and a few random plantains."

The skipper, who had been carefully, even lovingly, mixing drinks in
two more glasses, eyed O'Rourke severely.

"You'd better get married, and give up them tomfool actions," he
said, "or some fine day the Spaniards will catch up to you, and
then,--well, you'll be sorry, that's all."

"They caught up to several of our party this time," remarked
O'Rourke, casually.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Hemming, straightening his eye-glass.

The man with the Irish name and non-committal accent turned his head
on the locker, and smiled at the other adventurer.

"They were not particular pals of mine," he said, reassuringly, "so I
didn't stay to inquire their fate."

"You're fool enough to have stayed," remarked the skipper.

Hemming stared at the free and easy language of the mariner, and at
O'Rourke's good-natured way of taking it, for he had not yet become
entirely accustomed to the ways of the world outside the army, and
this O'Rourke, though unshaven and in tatters, was certainly a
gentleman, by Hemming's standards.  The master of the _Laura_ may
have read something of this in his passenger's face, for he turned to
him and said: "Mr. O'Rourke and I are pretty good friends.  We've
played ashore together, and we've sailed together more than once, and
when I call him a fool, why, it's my way of saying he's the
bangest-up, straight-grained man I know.  I never call him a fool
before his inferiors, and if it came to any one else calling him
anything, why--" and he slapped his big red hand on the chart-room
table with a blow that rocked the bottles.

"Shut up," said O'Rourke, blushing beneath his bristles and tan, "or
Captain Hemming will take me for as silly an ass as he takes you."

"Not at all," began Hemming, awkwardly, and, when the others roared
with laughter, he hid his confusion by draining his glass.  He had
never before been laughed at quite so violently, but he found, rather
to his surprise, that he liked it.

After lunch, O'Rourke (whose full name was Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke)
retired to his stateroom, and did not reappear until dinner-time.  He
looked better then, clean shaven, and attired in one of the skipper's
extra warm-weather suits.  He filled the borrowed clothes well enough
in length and in breadth of shoulder, but confessed, at table, that
the trousers lapped twice around his waist.  During the simple meal,
the conversation was all of the internal disturbance of Cuba, and all
the passengers, as well as the skipper, seemed interested in the
matter and well informed of recent incidents.  Hemming listened
keenly, now and then putting a question.  O'Rourke told a part of his
adventures during his last stay in the island, and sketched, in vivid
and well-chosen words, the daily life of the patriots.  It was not as
romantic as Hemming had hoped.

"It's a low sort of fighting on both sides,--not the kind you have
mixed in," said O'Rourke to Hemming.

"I?" exclaimed Hemming, while the dusky passengers and burly skipper
pricked up their ears.

"I saw your initials--H.H.--on your cigarette case," he explained,
"and I have read some good things signed H.H., by an Englishman, on
English army life, so of course I spotted you."

"I'm doing work for the New York News Syndicate now," said Hemming.

After dinner, O'Rourke led the way to the chart-room.  From the
locker he produced a small typewriting machine.  This he oiled, and
set up on the table.  The skipper winked at Hemming.

"I wish I'd smashed the danged thing while he was away," he said.
O'Rourke paid not the slightest attention to this pleasantry, but
inserted a sheet of paper, of which he had a supply stored in the
same place of safety.

"Now," said he, seating himself on a camp-stool before the machine,
"I don't mind how much you two talk, but I have some work to do."

"You, too?" laughed the Englishman.

"I'm only a free-lance," said O'Rourke, and, lighting a cigarette, he
began clicking the keys.  For more than an hour he worked steadily,
while the skipper and Hemming sat side by side on the locker and told
stories.  The door was hooked open, and a fresh breeze kept the room
cool, and circled the pungent smoke.

When Hemming turned in, he found that He could not sleep.  His brain
jumped and kept busy, in spite of him.  Now he lived again his
exciting days in Northern India.  From this he flashed to the Norfolk
tennis lawn, where Molly Travers listened again to his ardent vows.
He turned over and tried to win himself to slumber by counting
imaginary sheep.  But that only seemed to suggest to his memory the
care-free days of his youth.  Again he built forts in the warm earth
of the potting-house.  Again he fled from the red-headed gardener,
and stumbled into piled-up ranks of flowerpots, hurling them to
destruction.  Again he watched his father, in pink and spurs, trot
down the avenue in the gold, rare sunlight of those days.  Feeling
that these good memories would carry him safely to the land of peace,
he closed his eyes,--only to find his mind busy with that last day in
London.  He climbed swiftly from his berth, and, after slipping his
feet into his shoes, ascended to the deck.  He did not wait to change
his pajamas for anything more conventional.  There was not a breath
of wind.  The stars burned big and white; the water over the side
flashed away in silver fire, and farther out some rolling fish broke
its trail of flame; to starboard lay a black suggestion of land.
Looking forward, he saw that the door of the chart-room stood open,
emitting a warm flood of lamplight.  He went up to the lower bridge,
or half-deck, where the chart-room stood, and glanced within.  The
skipper lay on the locker, snoring peacefully, and O'Rourke still
clicked at the typewriter.  Hemming stole quietly in and poured
himself a glass of water from the clay bottle on the rack.

"Don't let me disturb you," he said to the worker.  "I'll just have a
smoke to kill wakefulness."

"If you can't sleep," said O'Rourke, "just listen to this as long as
your eyes will stay open."

He sorted over his pages of copy and began to read.  His voice was
low-pitched, and through it sounded the whispering of the steamer's
passage across the rocking waters.  The style was full of colour, and
Hemming was keenly interested from start to finish.  Not until the
last page was turned over did O'Rourke look up.

"What! not asleep yet!" he exclaimed.

"That seems to me very fine," said Hemming, seriously, "and I should
certainly take it for literature of an unusually high order if I did
not know that journalists cannot write literature."

"Do you think it will do?" asked O'Rourke, modestly.

"My dear chap," replied Hemming, "it will do for anything,--for a
book, or to carve on a monument.  It's a dashed sight too good for
any newspaper."

"It certainly wouldn't do for a newspaper," laughed the younger man.
"Just imagine an editor with a blue pencil, loose on those
descriptions of vegetation.  When I do newspaper stuff, I throw in
the blood and leave out the beauty.  That is for _Griffin's
Magazine_."

"Are you sure of your market?" asked the Englishman, wondering for
even in England, _Griffin's_ was known for its quality.

"It was ordered," said O'Rourke, "and this will make the ninth
article I have done for them within five years.  After months of
seeing and feeling things, I put the heart of it all, at one sitting,
into a story for _Griffin's_.  After that I cook my experiences and
hard-earned knowledge into lesser dishes for lesser customers.
Sometimes I even let it off in lyrics."

"You must flood the magazines," remarked Hemming, dryly.

"Not I.  To begin with, I place a great deal of my work with
publications of which you have never heard, and then, as I am young
and very productive, I write under three names, using my own for only
the things I wish to stand."

He arose and turned out the light, and to Hemming's amazement gray
dawn was on the sea and the narrow decks, and on the morning wind
came the odour of coffee.

"I think we are both good for a nap now," said O'Rourke.  They left
the master of the boat slumbering on his narrow couch, and went to
their staterooms; and before Hemming fell asleep, with his face to
the draft of the port, he thanked God in his heart for a new friend.




CHAPTER V.

THE ADVENTURERS DISPENSE WITH MR. NUNEZ

Hemming and O'Rourke, and O'Rourke's low-caste Cuban, landed in
Belize.  The _Laura_ continued on her way to Truxillo, and more
southern ports, for which she had a mixed freight of cheap articles
of American manufacture.  She would start north again from Costa
Rica, should she be able to find a cargo, so O'Rourke and Hemming had
both given manuscripts and letters to the Nova Scotia skipper, for
mailing at the first likely opportunity, with word that they would
wire an address later.  This done, the adventurers purchased three
undersized mules.  O'Rourke picked up what he could in the way of an
outfit, having left everything but his pipe and poncho in the Cuban
bush.  They loaded one of the mules with their belongings, and put it
in charge of John Nunez, and, mounting the others, started south,
skirting the coast.  The trip was uneventful, but Hemming wrote a
number of stories descriptive of the country and the people, the
mules and his companions, under the general title of "Along New
Trails with Old Mules."  O'Rourke regarded his friend's display of
energy with kindly disdain.

"There is bigger game to seaward," he said, and seemed ever on the
lookout for rumours of war from the northeast.  After three weeks'
easy travelling, they awoke one morning to find that John Nunez had
taken his departure during the night, and, along with his departure,
one of their mules, a bag of hardtack and a slab of bacon.

O'Rourke looked relieved.  "I've often wondered how I could ever get
rid of him, you know.  I once saved his life," he said.

"It's a good thing we happened to be using the rest of the provisions
for pillows, or, by gad, your precious servant would have left us to
starve," replied Hemming, in injured tones.

"Cheer up, old man," laughed O'Rourke.  "We're not three miles from
the coast, and I'll bet we are within ten of a village of some sort,"
he explained.

He was right, for by noon they were sitting at their ease before
black coffee and a Spanish omelette, in a shabby eating-house.  The
town was one of some importance--in its own eyes.  Also it interested
Hemming.  But O'Rourke sniffed.

"Gay colours and bad smells--I've experienced the whole thing
before," said he.

"Then why the devil did you leave the _Laura_?" asked Hemming,
pouring himself another glass of doubtful claret.

"To look after you," retorted O'Rourke.

"But, seriously," urged the Englishman.

"Oh, if you will be serious," confessed the freelance, "I'll admit
that it's in my blood.  I might have gone to New York and waited till
further developments in Cuba; but I could no more see you go ashore,
to waste your time and money, without wanting to follow suit, than
you could see me buy that high-priced claret without wanting to drink
it all yourself."

Hemming turned his monocle upon his friend in mild and curious regard.

"I doubt if there is another chap alive," he said, "who can write
such wisdom and talk such rot as you."

"Oh, go easy," expostulated O'Rourke, "you've only read one article
of mine--the twenty-page result of five weeks' sugar-cane and
observation."

"It was remarkable stuff," mused Hemming.

The younger man had the grace to bow.  "You don't look like the kind
of chap who is lavish with his praise," he said.

Lighting a potent local cigar, he leaned back in his rickety chair,
and shouted something in Spanish.  The owner of the place appeared,
rubbing his hands together and bowing.  He was a fat, brown man,
smelling of native cookery and native tobacco.  O'Rourke talked, at
some length, in Spanish, only a few words of which could Hemming
understand.  The proprietor waved his cigarette and gabbled back.
Again O'Rourke took up the conversation, and this time his flow of
mongrel Spanish was pricked out with bluff English oaths.

Hemming asked what it was all about.  O'Rourke gave himself up to
laughter.

"I have been trying to sell our mules," he said, at last, "but find
that the market is already glutted."

Hemming shook his head disconsolately.  "I fail to see the joke," he
said.

"Mine host here informs me that a Cuban gentleman arrived shortly
after daylight this morning," continued O'Rourke, "and sold a mule to
the American consul."

"Our mule," gasped the enlightened Englishman--then, leaping from his
chair with a violence that caused the fat proprietor to take refuge
behind a table, he cried that there was still a chance of overtaking
the rascal.  O'Rourke begged him to finish his claret in peace.  "And
don't do anything rash," he said, "for I warn you that if you catch
him you'll have to keep him.  I tremble even now, lest he should
enter the door and reclaim me as his master."  He blew a thin wisp of
smoke toward the ceiling, and laughed comfortably.  Then his glance
lowered to his friend, who had reseated himself at the other side of
the table.  He saw amazement and consternation written large in
Hemming's face.  The landlord also looked thunderstruck, standing
with his mouth open, his eyes fixed upon the door, and a dirty napkin
idle in his hand.  O'Rourke turned and followed their enraptured
gaze--and behold, clothed in new trousers and gaudy poncho, John
Nunez bowing on the threshold.

For long seconds a painful silence held the inmates of the
eating-house in thrall.  The delinquent broke it with a stream of
talk.  He pointed heavenward; he touched his breast with his fingers;
he spread his arms wide, and all the while he gabbled in Spanish.
Tears ran down his dusky cheeks.  O'Rourke regained his easy
attitude, and heard the story to the end.  He kept his gaze upon the
Cuban's face, and not once did the Cuban meet it.  At last the fellow
stopped talking, and stood before his master with his sullen,
tear-stained face half-hidden in a fold of his gay blanket.

"Well?" inquired Hemming.

"He says that he meant no harm," replied O'Rourke, "but that the
desire to steal was like fever in his blood.  He swears this by more
saints than I know the name of.  He says that he will give me the
money that he got for the mule, and will toil for me until the day of
his death, without a dollar of wages.  But he has sworn all these
things before, and every fit of repentance seems to make him more of
a rogue.  As for wages--why, his grub costs more than he is worth."

"Just let me take him in hand," said Hemming.

"You may try," assented O'Rourke.

By this time, and knowing his master's easy nature, Nunez was feeling
more at home.  The attitude of the penitent was not natural to him.
He freed one arm from the folds of his poncho and calmly extracted a
cigarette from his sash.  This he was about to light when Hemming's
voice arrested him in the act.

"Throw away that cigarette," came the order.

The Cuban feigned ignorance of the English language.  He raised his
eyebrows, paused a second to smile insolently, and lit the frail roll
of black tobacco with a flourish.  He inhaled the first puff with
very evident pleasure, and let it escape by way of his nostrils.  But
he did not draw the second, for Hemming's hand landed unexpectedly
upon the side of his head.  The cigarette flew at a tangent,
unrolling as it hit the earthen floor.  The Cuban span completely
around, reeled for a second, and then sprang at the Englishman with
drawn knife.  O'Rourke and the half-breed Mexican cried a warning.
They might have saved their breath for their next long walk, for
Hemming, quick as a terrier in his movements, stepped to one side and
delivered a remarkable blow with his fist.  The Cuban--a flash of gay
clothing and harmless knife-blade--went, backward, through the narrow
doorway.

"And now," said Hemming to O'Rourke, "what are we to do next?"

"Do next?" repeated O'Rourke, sadly, "why, just sit and whistle for
the fifty Mexican dollars, which the American consul paid John for
our mule."

Hemming hurried to the door and looked up and down the glaring
street.  Nunez was nowhere to be seen.

"He's not lying around anywhere, shamming dead, is he?" inquired
O'Rourke.

"Don't see him," replied Hemming.

"Then now is our chance to shake him for good," said the other, "and
the only way I can think of is to put out to sea."

As if he had made the most reasonable suggestion in the world, he
paid their score and stepped into the street.  Hemming followed to
the water-front, too deep in wonder to offer objections, or demand
explanations.




CHAPTER VI.

HEMMING HEARS OF THE VILLAIN

Six days later, in a club in Kingston, Jamaica, Hemming ran across a
naval officer whom he had met, years ago, at a county ball.

"Hullo, left the army?" asked the sailor.

"Verily," replied Hemming, who could not recall the other's name.

"What--more money?"

"Less."

"Nice scandal in your old regiment.  You're well out of it."

"I have heard nothing.  We rather prided ourselves on our
respectability."

"A chap called Penthouse," ran on the sailor, "has turned out a
regular sneak-thief.  The others began to miss things--money and
cuff-links, and trifles like that--and one day the colonel caught him
in his room pocketing a gold watch.  I believe the poor beggar was
hard up--at least so my correspondent says."

At this point he noticed the pallor of Hemming's face.

"Not a friend of yours, I hope," he added, hastily.

"Far from it, but he is related to some people I know very well,"
replied Hemming.

"He was a low cur, even before he turned thief," said the talkative
sailor, "and Jones tells me he fleeced an awfully decent, but stupid
sort of chap--"  He came to a full stop, and glared blankly at his
new-found acquaintance.

"Thank you," laughed Hemming, who had regained his composure as the
navy man lost his.

"Ah--damn silly break, wasn't it?" gabbled the other, turning to
O'Rourke, "but you two'll come aboard to-morrow, and have lunch with
us.  One-thirty, and there's a turtle in the pot."  He left the club
without waiting for an answer.

Hemming and O'Rourke had made the voyage from Honduras to Kingston in
a fifty-foot schooner.  For passage-money they had handed over the
two mules, together with the residue of their provisions.  Things are
not as cheap as they look in Central America.  O'Rourke had navigated
the vessel, for the owner had proved himself useless, and Hemming had
hauled on sheets and halyards and worked the antiquated pump.  But in
time they had arrived safely in Kingston, and never had hot water and
clean food felt and tasted so good.  Hemming had mailed his "copy,"
O'Rourke had gone to a tailor; and now they lived at ease, and
awaited checks and letters from the North.  The friendship of these
two had been an assured thing from the moment of their first meeting,
in the chart-room of the _Laura_, and it had grown steadily with
every adventure and hardship in common.  They respected each other's
dauntless spirits and literary styles.  Hemming admired O'Rourke's
cheerful heart, and his faculty (almost amounting to genius) for
getting out of tight places.  He also liked his manners, and envied
him the length of his limbs.  O'Rourke, in his turn, admired his
comrade's knowledge of things in general, and the way in which he
kept quiet about incidents in his past, without sulkiness.  He liked
his hasty, forgiving temper, and felt an almost personal anger toward
whatever, or whoever, had embittered his life; and he considered him
as well set-up a middleweight as he had ever seen.  From O'Rourke,
Hemming learned to do things for himself--little things like rolling
a blanket, frying bacon, and pitching a tent.  In the past there had
always been a Mr. Thomas Atkins to look after such trifles.  Also he
learned that no knowledge comes amiss to a roving newspaper man, from
the science of navigation to the art of sewing on patches, and the
low occupation of grooming a mule.  He realized how much more
comfortable his life in the army, and his travelling in Greece and
Turkey would have been, had he been able to turn his own hand to the
things other people had left undone.  His heart warmed toward his
instructor.  One night, while they were smoking on the veranda of
their hotel, and looking away at the lights in the harbour, he told a
little of his story--something of Penthouse, and something of the
girl he loved.  But he did not mention her name, and, much to his
relief, O'Rourke did not seem curious about it.  That was one of
O'Rourke's most comfortable characteristics.  It was really a matter
of breeding.  He was deeply interested in whatever a person chose to
tell him, and he would put helpful questions which did not call for
further confessions; but he never tried to draw a man.  One might
safely tell him that one's grandmother had been a cannibal, without
fear of being asked any question concerning one's grandfather.  If he
really wanted to know, he would go quietly to some one else for the
information.

Shortly after arriving in Jamaica, Hemming wrote a letter to
Anderson, his particular friend in the Engineers.  He mentioned
having heard of Penthouse's outbreak, but said nothing of the
occurrences of his last visit to London.  He told, at a length
suggestive of his profession, of the trip through Yucatan and
Honduras, of his new friend, and of the adventurous passage from the
coast of Central America to Kingston.  He sang the praises of a free
life and the glories of the tropics.  He spoke of his success with
the syndicate, and the probability of fighting in Cuba in the near
future.  He tried hard to make every line of the letter echo
contentment, knowing that Anderson would, very likely, retail its
contents to Miss Travers.

"My God," he said, "I was fool enough, once, to let her see the wound
she made, but once is for all."

For the remainder of the morning O'Rourke found him in a low mood,
and after trying, in vain, to raise his spirits with a new cigar as
long as a riding-boot, he smoked the weed himself and wrote a ballad
about pirates and blood.  It was the ballad, complete after an hour's
work, that did the business for Hemming.  The swinging lines and
rolling phrases, the fearful sea-oaths and unexpected rhymes started
him in action.  At first he was not sure whether he wanted to ride or
write, but, with a little tactful persuasion from O'Rourke, decided
on the former.  They hired a couple of horses, went to the club, and
drew several of their friends of H.M.S. _Thunderer_, and rode for
hours, lunching late, out of town.

One morning Hemming received a cablegram from Dodder, of the New York
Syndicate, telling him to stand ready for orders, and that a letter
followed.  In a few days the letter came.  It was a friendly, though
businesslike epistle, and contained a check.  It ran as follows:


"MY DEAR CAPTAIN HEMMING:--Your stories reached me, and were
immediately set up and distributed broadcast.  They please me, as
does all your work.  I got a check from Wells for the amount of two
months' expenses (at the rate we agreed upon), and your salary, up to
date, has been marked to your credit.  I believe there will be
trouble in Europe before long, and we hear that Devlin, of whom I
spoke to you, is down with some sort of fever.  Be prepared to start
East at the shortest notice, and please look up some one, an
experienced man, of course, to keep an eye on Cuba for us, should you
have to leave.  A man who knows the country, and is immune from
yellow fever, would be of more value than an experienced journalist.
We have journalists here, but I fear they would fall down on the job.
I do not believe the Cuban affair will ever come to more than
skirmishing, but even that is interesting when it happens at our own
back door.  No mail has come to us for you.  Please write us if you
know of a man.

  "Yours very sincerely,
      "WASHINGTON DODDER, Manager."


Hemming read it to O'Rourke.

"Will you accept the job?" he asked.

"Yes, when some one lands an invading army, but not before," replied
O'Rourke.  "Fact is, I'm afraid to sneak into the place again.  The
Spaniards know me too well.  I've run away with Gomez and I've
retreated with Garcia, and I've had quite enough of it.  But if you
have to leave and I can't get a chance to go along with you, I'll
keep my eye on things, and do what a man can.  I can at least send
them some photographs of starving women and babies with distended
tummies.  I notice, by the magazines, that the popular fancy is
turning toward sweet pictures of that kind, and, as luck would have
it, I indulged in photography last time I was there, and the films
happened to be in my pocket when John and I sailed away."

Thus did Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke, the free-lance who hated to move
or stay at any man's bidding, fetter himself with the chain of duty,
and become the servant of a great syndicate.  But for weeks he did
not feel the chain, but made merry with sailors and landsmen, and did
inspired work for _Griffin's Magazine_.  At last word came to
Hemming, calling him to the East to report the actions of the wily
Turk and courageous Greek, and, after putting his friend aboard the
mail-boat, O'Rourke sat down and grappled the fact of his own
responsibilities.  After due consideration he wrote to the syndicate,
explained his position, mentioned his past efforts in Cuba, and
promised some interesting cables if they would send him enough money
to charter a tug.  To his amazement (his name carried more weight
than he knew) they wired the money and told him to go ahead.

Thus it happened that within eight days of one another's departure,
and after an intimate and affectionate friendship, Herbert Hemming
sailed for one battle-field and Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke for
another, and one stout gentleman in New York paid all the pipers.




CHAPTER VII.

AN ELDERLY CHAMPION

While Herbert Hemming tried to ease the bitterness of his heart and
forget the injustice that had been done him, in new scenes and amid
new companions, Miss Travers suffered at home.  Her lover had
scarcely left the house before misgivings tore her.  Now, alone and
shaken with grief, she saw upon what treasonable foundation she had
accused an honourable man of--she hardly knew what.  Why had he
listened to her?  Why had he not laughed, and kissed away her awful,
hysterical foolishness?  Then she remembered how she had repulsed his
caress, and there in the narrow, heavily furnished drawing-room she
leaned her head upon her arms and prayed.

Half an hour later she was startled by the ringing of the door-bell,
and hastened to her own room.

The caller was an elderly bachelor brother of her mother's--a man
with a small income, a taste for bridge, and tongue and ears for
gossip.  His visits were always welcome to Mrs. Travers.  Mrs.
Travers was a stout lady much given to family prayers, scandal, and
disputes with servants.  As the widow of a bishop she felt that she
filled, in the being of the nation, a somewhat similar position to
that occupied by Westminster Abbey.  She doted on all those in
temporal and spiritual authority, almost to the inclusion of curates
and subalterns,--if they had expectations.  Once upon a time, seeing
nothing larger in sight for her daughter, she had been Herbert
Hemming's motherly friend.  Then she had heard from Mr. Penthouse
(who was poor and dissipated, and might some day become a baronet)
that Hemming's fortune was not nearly so large as people supposed.
At first she had watched the change in her daughter, under
Penthouse's influence, with vague alarm; but a suspicion of more
eligible suitors in the offing stilled her fears.  The hints which
her pleasing nephew brought to her, of Hemming's double life,
inflamed her righteous anger against the quiet captain.  Had her
daughter's lover been the master of five thousand a year she would
have admonished Penthouse to keep silence concerning the affairs of
his superiors.  As it was, she thought her righteous indignation
quite genuine, for few people of her kind know the full extent of
their respectable wickedness.  Then had come news, through her
daughter, of Hemming's retirement from the army and entrance into
journalism.  Molly had mentioned it, very quietly, one morning at
breakfast.  Then had come Hemming himself, and with vast satisfaction
she had heard him leave the house without any bright laughter at the
door.  And just as she had determined to descend and soothe Molly
with words of pious comfort, her brother had arrived.

Mrs. Travers heard Molly go to her room and close the door.  She
decided that charity would keep better than Mr. Pollin's gossip, so
she descended to the drawing-room as fast as her weight would allow.
They shook hands cordially; after which Mr. Pollin stood respectfully
until his sister got safely deposited in the strongest chair in the
room.

Mr. Pollin was a gossip, as I have previously stated, but many of his
stories were harmless.  He dressed in the height of fashion, and, in
spite of his full figure, carried himself jauntily.  In his youth
(before he had come in for his modest property, and mastered whist)
he had studied law, and it was rumoured that he had even tried to
write scholarly articles and book reviews for the daily press.  At
one stage in his career his sister and the late bishop had really
trembled for his respectability; but their fears had proved to be
unfounded, for, lacking encouragement from the editors, Mr. Pollin
had settled down to unbroken conventionality.  Mr. Pollin's features
resembled his sister's, but his mouth was more given to smiling, and
his eyes held a twinkle, while hers were dimly lit with a gleam of
cold calculation.

To-day Mr. Pollin had quite unexpected news, at first-hand from an
Irish acquaintance of his, a Major O'Grady.  But he did not blurt it
out, as a lesser gossip would have done.

"Have you seen Harry Penthouse lately?" he asked.

"Not for two days," said the lady.

Mr. Pollin crossed his knees with an effort, and tried to look over
his waistcoat at his polished boots.

"He returns to his regiment shortly," added Mrs. Travers.

Her brother coughed gently, and scrutinized the ring on his finger
with an intensity that seemed quite uncalled for.

"What is the matter?" cried the lady, breathless with the suspense.

"Nothing, my dear, although I hardly envy Harry.  I'm afraid he will
find his regiment a rather uncomfortable place," replied Pollin.

"Do you mean the regiment, or his quarters, Richard?"

"His quarters are comfortable enough for a better man," replied the
elderly dandy, with a slight ring of emotion in his voice.

"Richard," exclaimed the dame, "what are you hinting about your
nephew?"

"No nephew of mine," replied the other, "nor even of yours, I think.
Poor Charles and old Sir Peter were first cousins, were they not?"

"But they were just like brothers," she urged.

"It's a pity young Penthouse hadn't been spanked more in his early
youth," remarked Mr. Pollin.

Mrs. Travers began to feel decidedly uneasy.  Could it be that Harry
had, in some way, forfeited his chances of the estate and title?
Could it be that the invalid brother, the unsociable, close-fisted
one, had married?  But she did not put the questions.

"What rash thing has the young man done?" she inquired.

"Nothing rash, but something dashed low," answered her brother.
"To-day," he continued, "I received a letter from a gentleman whom it
appears I've met several times in the country, Major O'Grady, of the
Seventy-Third.  He has evidently quite forgotten the fact that I am
in any way connected with Harry Penthouse, or interested in Herbert
Hemming, and after several pages of reference to some exciting
rubbers we have had together (I really cannot recall them to mind),
he casually tells me the inner history of Hemming's leaving the
service."

"Ah, I thought so," sighed Mrs. Travers.

"Thought what, my dear sister?" asked Pollin, shortly.

The good lady was somewhat confused by the abruptness of her
brother's manner, and her guard was forgotten.

"That the inner history," she replied, "is that Captain Hemming was
requested to resign his commission."

"You have jumped the wrong way, Cordelia," said the gentleman, with a
disconcerting smile, "for the regiment, from the colonel to the
newest subaltern, and from the sergeant-major to the youngest bugler,
are, figuratively speaking, weeping over his departure."

Mrs. Travers seemed to dwindle in her chair.  "Then why did he
retire?" she asked, in a thin whisper.

"Because Harry Penthouse wolfed all his money.  At first he borrowed
a hundred or so, and lost it gambling.  Hemming got a bit shy, but
thought, of course, that some day it would all be paid back.  He
wanted to help the boy, so, after a good deal of persuasion, endorsed
his note for a large sum, and the note was cashed by a Jew who had
helped Penthouse before.  The Jew was honest, but he came a cropper
himself, and could not afford to renew the note.  Penthouse had only
enough left to carry him stylishly over his two months' leave, so
Hemming had to stump up.  O'Grady says he didn't get so much as a
'Thank you' from the young bounder."

For several minutes the lady kept a stunned silence.  Presently she
braced herself, and laughed unmusically.

"I have heard a very different story," she said, "and I believe from
a better authority than this Major O'Brady."

"O'Grady," corrected Pollin, "and a very dear friend of mine--cousin
to Sir Brian O'Grady."

The good fellow's imagination was getting the bit in its teeth by
this time, and his mind was turning toward the quiet of his club, and
a nip of something before dinner.

"You have your choice between Major O'Grady's story and Harry
Penthouse's," said the lady.

"And I choose O'Grady's," replied the gentleman, "because I know
Penthouse and I know Herbert.  Herbert is a good soldier and a good
sort, and Harry is a damned overgrown, overfed cad."

He stole away without farewell, abashed and surprised at his own heat
and breach of etiquette.

After her brother's departure Mrs. Travers sought her daughter.  She
wanted to know all the particulars of Hemming's visit.

"It is all over between us," sobbed the girl, and beyond that she
could learn nothing.  Having failed to receive information, she
immediately began to impart some, and told what Mr. Pollin had heard
from Major O'Grady.  Molly, who lay on the bed, kept her face buried
in the pillow, and showed no signs of hearing anything.  At last her
mother left her, after saying that she would send her dinner up to
her.  The bewildered woman had never felt quite so put about since
the death of the lord bishop.  Could it be, she wondered, that she
had made a mistake in encouraging Harry Penthouse's work tearing down
Molly's belief in Hemming?  Even her dinner did not altogether
reassure her troubled spirit.

Several days later Miss Travers wrote to Hemming.  It contained only
a line or two.  It begged his forgiveness.  It called him to return
and let her show her love.  She sent it to his old address in Dublin,
and in the corner wrote "Please forward."

[Illustration: "SEVERAL DAYS LATER MISS TRAVERS WROTE TO HEMMING"]

Now it happened that Private Malloy, who had once been Captain
Hemming's orderly, was sent one day, by a sergeant, for the officers'
mail.  He thought himself a sly man, did Mr. Malloy, and when he
found a letter addressed to his late beloved master, in a familiar
handwriting, he decided that it was from "one of them dunnin' Jews,"
and carefully separated it from the pile.  Later he burned it.  "One
good turn deserves another," said he, watching the thin paper flame
and fade.

Penthouse returned to his regiment without calling again on Molly and
Mrs. Travers.  Somehow, after the beating he had received, he did not
feel like showing his face anywhere in town.  Day after day Molly
waited for an answer to her letter.  By this time she had heard, from
Captain Anderson (who had acted nervously during his short call), of
Hemming's intention of going immediately to Greece.  So for two weeks
she waited hopefully.  Then the horrible fear that she had hurt him
beyond pardoning, perhaps even disgusted him, grew upon her.  But for
more than a month every brisk footfall on the pavement and every ring
at the door-bell set her heart burning and left it throbbing with
pain.

When she drove with her mother she scanned the faces of the men in
the street, and often and often she changed colour at sight of a
thin, alert face or broad, gallant shoulders in the crowd.

Captain Anderson was at Aldershot when he received his friend's
letter from Jamaica.  He went up to town and called on Miss Travers,
and, without so much as "by your leave," read her extracts from the
letter.  She listened quietly, with downcast eyes and white face.
When he was through with it she looked at him kindly; but her eyes
were dim.

"Why do you taunt me?" she asked.  "Is it because you are his
friend?"  The smile that followed the question was not a happy one.

The sapper's honest face flamed crimson.  "I thought you wanted to
know about him," he stammered.

"Of course I am glad to hear that he is so successful--and so happy,"
she replied, and her mouth took on a hardness strange and new to it.
She remembered the passionate appeal in her own letter--the cry of
love that had awakened no answering cry--and her pride and anger set
to work to tear the dreams from her heart.  But a dream built by the
Master Workman, of stuffs lighter than the wind, outlasts the heavy
walls of kings' monuments.




CHAPTER VIII.

HEMMING UNDERTAKES A DIGNIFIED WORK

Hemming went through the Turko-Grecian campaign from beginning to
end, with much credit to himself and profit to the syndicate.  He
worked hard, and, on occasions, risked life and limb.  No word of
legitimate news of actions got out of the country ahead of his.  When
the fighting was over, he wrote a careful article on the uselessness
of the sword in modern battles.  He described the few occasions in
which he had seen a blooded sword in action.  He damned them all--the
pointed blade of the infantry officer, and the cutting sabre of the
cavalry trooper.  They would do for hill raids, or charges against
savages, but before the steady fire of men on foot, armed with rifles
of the latest pattern, they were hopeless.  Their day had passed with
the passing of the ramrod, he said.  After heading it "Cold Steel in
Modern Warfare," he decided that it would be a pity to waste it on
the New York News Syndicate; for of late he had become dissatisfied
with his arrangements with the syndicate.  He had found that, out of
the dozen or more war-correspondents whom he had met during the
campaign, only two were allowed so small a sum as he for expenses,
and not one was paid so small a salary.  So he mailed his wise story
to a big London weekly, and wrote to Dodder for a raise in his salary
and expenses.  At this time he was living quietly in Athens, with a
number of friends,--merry fellows, all,--but he missed O'Rourke's
whimsical conversations and kindly comradeship.

The big London weekly published Hemming's article, and commented upon
it editorially.  It also sent him a modest check--more modest than
its size and reputation would lead one to suppose.  Mr. Dodder's
letter arrived at about the same time.  The manager of the syndicate
was firm, though gentle.  He pointed out that already Hemming drew
more money than any other correspondent connected with the concern.
He explained that, even now, Mr. Wells frequently grumbled.  "And
after all," he concluded, "you are a new man, and we are helping you
to a reputation."

"We'll see about that," said Hemming, and wrote to say that he would
like to take a holiday until more fighting turned up.  He sent them
his address for the next six months--Maidmill-on-Dee, Cheshire,
England.  Then he sold his horse, packed his things, and sailed for
England.

At Maidmill-on-Dee, in a stone cottage with a slated roof, lived an
old couple named Thomson.  During the brief married life of Hemming's
parents, these two good folk had looked after their bodily
welfare--Thomson as gardener and groom, and Mrs. Thomson as cook.
Hemming's father, though well connected, had made his livelihood as a
country doctor.  The people in Maidmill-on-Dee still remembered him
as a handsome, generous man with the manner of a lord lieutenant of
the county, and with always a good horse in his stables.  Hemming's
mother had been the daughter of a scholarly, though poor, country
vicar.  She had been a beauty in a frail, white way, and a lover of
her husband, her home, and good literature.  When the doctor had died
of blood-poisoning, contracted during a simple operation upon one of
his many poor patients, she had tried, for awhile, to take heart
again, but had followed him within a year.  After the deaths of the
parents a wealthy relative had remembered the son, and, finding him a
youth of promise, had given him some money.

Hemming drove from the station in the public bus.  He passed the
house where so much of his earlier years had been spent, and told the
driver to take him to Joseph Thomson's.  They rattled down the quiet,
single street, and drew up at the stone threshold.  He helped the
driver pile his bags and boxes beside the door.  Then he dismissed
the conveyance, and paused for awhile before entering the cottage,
with a warm, new feeling of homecoming in his heart.  The low, wide
kitchen was unoccupied, but the door leading to the garden behind
stood open.  He sat down in a well-worn chair and looked about.  The
October sunlight lit up the dishes on the dresser.  A small table by
a window was laid with plates and cups for two.  He heard voices in
the garden.  A woman, stout and gray-haired, entered with a head of
Brussels sprouts in her hand, and with her cotton skirt kilted up,
displaying a bright, quilted petticoat.  Hemming got up from his
chair, but she was not looking toward him, and she was evidently hard
of hearing.  He stepped in front of her and laid his hands on her
shoulders.

"Susan," he said, beaming.

"Lor', Master Bert," she exclaimed, "you're still at your tricks."

In a flutter of delight she smacked him squarely on the mouth, and
then, blushing and trembling, begged his pardon.

"I can't think you're a grown-up man," she explained.  She surveyed
him at arm's length.

"You're not overly big," she said, "an' that's a fact.  But you're
surprising thick through the chest and wide i' the shoulders.  An'
who'd ever have looked for Master Bert, all so suddent, i'
Maidmill-on-Dee."

By this time she was in a fair way to burst into tears, so fast were
the old memories crowding upon her.  Hemming feared tears more than
the devil, and, patting her violently on the back, forced her into a
chair.

"There, Susan, there.  Now keep cool and fire low, and tell me what
you are going to have for lunch?" he urged.

"Thomson," she called, "there is a gentleman here as wants to see
you."

"Bes there, now?" said Thomson, and rubbed his hands on his smock.

"Never mind your hands," she called.

Thomson scraped his heavy way into the kitchen, and blinked at the
visitor.

"Howde, sir," he remarked, affably.

"How are you, Thomson?  Glad to see you again," said Hemming,
extending his hand.

The old gardener gave back a step, with a slight cry and an uptossing
of gnarled hands.

He recovered himself with an effort.

"God bless me, it's Master Herbert," he exclaimed.  "Do you know,
missus, I thought it was the doctor askin' how I was," he continued,
turning to his wife, "but the master was a more sizable man,--yes,
an' redder i' the face."

"Ay," replied Mrs. Thomson, "but hansome is as hansome does--meanin'
nothin' disrespectful about the old master, God bless his memory,
dear man,--and Master Bert is a fine appearin' young gentleman."

The gaffer nodded.  "The lasses wud believe you, missus," he said.

"What lasses do you mean?" inquired the old woman, sharply.  "Where's
the lass i' this village fit to believe anything about one o' the
queen's officers--tell me that."

"Ay, I was sayin' nothin'," replied Thomson.

The woman looked quizzically at Hemming.

"Like enough there's a young lady in Lunnon," she suggested.

"There is no young lady--anywhere," said Hemming, "and I'm no longer
in the army.  I'm at another trade now."

"Trade?" exclaimed Thomson.

"Well, hardly that," laughed Hemming.  "I write for a living."

Mrs. Thomson nodded with satisfaction.

"The queen's son-in-law wrote a book," she said.

"I hardly do that kind," said Hemming, uneasily.

"I vum you don't, sir," cried the man, whacking the table, "not if
the missus means the book she read to me out of, oncet."

Hemming was pleased with the old man's shrewdness, though Mrs.
Thomson was shocked at his insinuations.

Hemming settled down in the cottage, much to the delight of the old
couple.  A fair-sized room on the ground floor was given over to him,
for bedroom and study.  The success of his last article had suggested
to him the writing of a book about what he knew, and had seen, of the
last brief campaign--something more lasting than his syndicate work,
and more carefully done.  This work would have colour, not too
heavily splashed on; style, not too aggressive; and dignity befitting
the subject.  He decided that he must prune his newspaper style
considerably for the book.  So he settled down to his work, and after
three days' honest labour, all that stood of it was the title, "Where
Might Is Right."  Strange to say, this seeming failure did not
discourage him.  He knew what he had to say, and felt that as soon as
the right note for the expression of it was struck, it would be easy
to go on.  The pages he so ruthlessly destroyed were splendid
newspaper copy, but he knew the objection thinking men have to
finding newspaper work between the covers of a book.  But at last the
opening chapter was done to his taste; and after that the work was
easy and pleasant.  It soon became his habit to get out of bed in
time to breakfast with Thomson, who was a thrifty market-gardener on
a small scale.  After his breakfast he smoked a cigar in the garden,
and sometimes told stories of his adventures to his host.  By eight
o'clock he was at his table, writing rapidly, but not steadily, until
twelve o'clock.  After the simple midday dinner he walked for several
hours, and seldom went back to his work until candle-time.  In this
way, with books and magazines sent down every week from London, he
managed to put in his time without letting himself think too often of
Molly Travers.  Nothing in the village reminded him of her, and his
healthy days brought him, for the most part, dreamless nights.

The old people were immensely interested in Hemming and his work.
They even persuaded him to read some of the chapters of his book
aloud to them.  It was plain to Hemming that Mrs. Thomson's signs of
appreciation were matters more of the heart than the head; but not so
with Thomson.  He would applaud a convincing argument or a
well-turned sentence by slapping his hand on his knee, and for hours
after a reading would sit by the chimney and mumble curses on the
heads of the Turks.  One morning, while Hemming was watching him at
his work, he turned from the bonfire he had been tending and, without
preamble, grasped his lodger's hand.

"You've a power of brains inside your head, sir," he said, with
vehemence.  Hemming felt that, even from O'Rourke, he had never
received a more pleasing compliment.  He rewarded the gaffer with a
cigar from his own case.

By Christmas "Where Might Is Right" was finished, and posted to a
London publisher.  With this work done, restlessness returned to
Hemming.  He fought it off for awhile, but at last packed a bag with
his best clothes, and, telling Mrs. Thomson to take care of his
letters until his return, went up to London.  First of all he called
on the publishers to whom he had sent his book.  The manager was in,
and received Hemming cordially.  He said that he had not yet looked
at Hemming's manuscript, and that at present it was in town, having
been taken away to a house-party by their literary adviser.  However,
he had followed Captain Hemming's career as a war-correspondent and
writer of army stories with interest, and felt that it was altogether
likely that the firm would want to do business with him.  The genial
glow of the season must have been in the gentleman's blood, for he
cordially invited Hemming to lunch with him at his club.  Upon
reaching the street Hemming found the fog, which had been scarcely
noticeable a short time before, was rapidly thickening.

"Let us walk--it is but a step," said the publisher, "and I've made
the trip in every kind of weather for the last twenty years."

On the steps of the club Hemming stumbled against a crouched figure.
There was a dull yellow glare from the lamp above, and by it Hemming
saw the beggar's bloated, hungry face, bedraggled red beard, and
trembling hand.  The eyes were cunning and desperate, but pitiful
just then.  Hemming passed the poor fellow a coin,--a two-shilling
piece,--and followed his guide into the warm, imposing hall of the
club, wondering where he had seen those unscrupulous eyes before.
The club was brightly lighted.  The lunch was long and complicated
and very good.  The publisher was vastly entertaining, and seemed in
no hurry to get back to his work.  Hemming's thoughts, in spite of
the cheer, busied themselves with the beggar on the steps.

"Did you notice the beggar outside?" he asked, at last.

"The chap with the bushy beard?--why, yes, he is new to this
quarter," replied the other.

"He was a desperate-looking devil, and I think the beard was false,"
remarked Hemming.  But as his host did not seem interested in either
the beggar or his beard, the subject was dropped.

Next day, with an unnamed hope in his heart that something might
happen, Hemming passed the Travers house.  But the hope died at sight
of it, for it was clearly unoccupied!  He remained in town a few days
longer, seeking familiar faces in familiar haunts, and finding none
to his mind.  He thought it strange that romance, and everything
worth while, should have deserted the great city in so brief a time.
But, for that matter, when he came to think of it, the whole world
had lost colour.  He decided that he was growing old--and perhaps too
wise.  After standing the genial publisher a dinner, and receiving a
promise of a speedy decision on "Where Might Is Right," he returned
to Maidmill-on-Dee, to spend weary months awaiting rumour of war.  At
last the rumour came, closely followed by sailing orders.




CHAPTER IX.

O'ROURKE TELLS A SAD STORY

Upon his arrival in New York, Hemming called immediately upon Mr.
Dodder, in the New York News Syndicate Building on Fulton Street.  He
found the manager even stouter than at the time of their first
meeting, and of a redder countenance.  His manner was as cordial as
before, but his mood was not so jovial.

"I am always worrying about something or other, and just now it is my
health," he told Hemming.  "You don't know what I'd give, captain,
for a life like yours--and a good hard body like yours.  But I can't
drop this job now.  It's the very devil, I can tell you, to have
one's brain and nerves jumping and twanging all the time, while one's
carcass lolls about and puts on fat.  I'm sorry I was so smart when I
was a kid.  Otherwise the old man would not have sent me to college,
and I'd never have hustled myself into this slavery.  My father was a
lumberman, and so was my grandfather.  They had big bodies, just like
mine, but they lived the right kind of lives for their bodies."

Hemming felt sorry for him.  He saw that the gigantic body was at
strife with the manner of life to which it was held, and that the
same physique that had proved itself a blessing to the lumberman, was
a menace to the desk-worker.

"Better take a few months in the woods," he suggested.

Dodder laughed bitterly.  "You might just as well advise me to take a
few months in heaven," he said.

Hemming asked for news of O'Rourke.

The manager's face lighted.

"O'Rourke," he exclaimed, "is a man wise in his generation.  Shackles
of gold couldn't hold that chap from his birthright of freedom.  He
did us some fine work for a time,--rode with Gomez and got his news
out somehow or other,--but went under with enteric and left Cuba.  We
kept him on, of course, but as soon as he could move around again he
resigned his position.  He said he had some very pressing business
affair to see to."

"Is he well again?" asked Hemming, anxiously.

"Oh, yes, he's able to travel," replied Dodder.  "He was here only a
week ago.  He seems to be making a tour of the Eastern cities.  I
guess he's looking for something."

"An editor, likely, who has lost some of his manuscripts," remarked
Hemming.

"Or a girl," said the other.

"Why a girl?" asked the Englishman.

Dodder smiled pensively.  "I like to think so," he said, "for though
I am nothing but a corpulent business slave myself, I've a fine
active brain for romance, and the heart of a Lochinvar."

Hemming nodded gravely.  Dodder laughed at him.  "You are thinking
what a devilish big horse I need," he said.

They dined together that evening at the Reform Club, and Hemming was
amazed at the quantity of food the big man consumed.  He had seen
O'Rourke, the long, lean, and broad, sit up to some hearty meals
after a day in the saddle, but never had he met with an appetite like
Dodder's.  It was the appetite of his ancestral lumbermen, changed a
little in taste, perhaps, but the same in vigour.

War was in order between the United States of America and Spain.
General Shafter's army was massing in Tampa, Florida, and Hemming,
with letters from the syndicate, started for Washington to procure a
pass from the War Office.  But on the night before his departure from
New York came news from London of his book, and the first batch of
proof-sheets for correction.  He worked until far into the morning,
and mailed the proofs, together with a letter, before breakfast.
Arriving in Washington, he went immediately to the War Department
building, and handed in his letters.  The clerk returned and asked
him to follow to an inner room.  There he found a pale young man,
with an imposing, closely printed document in his hand.

"Captain Hemming?" inquired the gentleman.

Hemming bowed.

"Your credentials are correct," continued the official, "and the
Secretary of War has signed your passport.  Please put your name
here."

Hemming signed his name on the margin of the document, folded it, and
stowed it in a waterproof pocketbook, and bowed himself out.  He was
about to close the door behind him when the official called him back.

"You forgot something, captain," said the young man, holding a packet
made up of about half a dozen letters toward him.

"Not I," replied Hemming.  He glanced at the letters, and read on the
top one "Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke, Esq."

"O'Rourke," he exclaimed.

"How stupid of me," cried the young man.

"Where is he?  When was he here?" inquired Hemming.  "He is a
particular friend of mine," he added.

The official considered for a second or two.

"Tall chap with a yellow face and a silk hat, isn't he?" he asked.

"Tall enough," replied Hemming, "but he had neither a yellow face nor
a silk hat when I saw him last--that was in Jamaica, about a year
ago."

At that moment the door opened and O'Rourke entered.  Without
noticing Hemming he gave a folded paper to the clerk.

"You'll find that right enough," he said--and then his eye lighted
upon his old comrade.  He grasped the Englishman by the shoulders and
shook him backward and forward, grinning all the while a wide, yellow
grin.

"My dear chap," protested Hemming, "where have you been to acquire
this demonstrative nature?"

"Lots of places.  Come and have a drink," exclaimed O'Rourke.

"I'll mail that to your hotel," called the pale young man after them,
as they hurried out.

"What are you up to now, my son?" inquired Hemming, critically
surveying the other's faultless attire.  "You look no end of a toff,
in spite of your yellow face."

"Thanks, and I feel it," replied his friend, "but my release is at
hand, for to-night I shall hie me to mine uncle's and there deposit
these polite and costly garments.  Already my riding-breeches and
khaki tunic are airing over the end of my bed."

"But why this grandeur, and this wandering about from town to town?"
asked Hemming.  He caught the quick look of inquiry on his friend's
face.  "Dodder told me you'd been aimlessly touring through the
Eastern States," he added.

"Here we are--come in and I'll tell you about it," replied O'Rourke.
They entered the Army and Navy Club, and O'Rourke, with a
very-much-at-home air, led the way to a quiet inner room.

"I suppose we'll split the soda the same old way--as we did before
sorrow and wisdom came to us," sighed O'Rourke.  He gave a familiar
order to the attentive waiter.  Hemming looked closely at his
companion, and decided that the lightness was only a disguise.

"Tell me the yarn, old boy--I know it's of more than fighting and
fever," he said, settling himself comfortably in his chair.

O'Rourke waited until the servant had deposited the glasses and
retired.  Then he selected two cigars from his case with commendable
care, and, rolling one across the table, lit the other.  He inhaled
the first draught lazily.

"These are deuced fine cigars," remarked Hemming.  O'Rourke nodded
his head, and, with his gaze upon the blue drift of smoke, began his
story.

"I was in a very bad way when I got out of that infernal island last
time.  I had a dose of fever that quite eclipsed any of my former
experiences in that line--also a bullet-hole in the calf of my left
leg.  Maybe you noticed my limp, and thought I was feigning gout.  A
tug brought me back to this country, landing me at Port Tampa.  Some
patriotic Cubans were waiting for me, and I made the run up to Tampa
in a car decorated with flags.  I wore my Cuban uniform, you know,
and must have looked more heroic than I felt."

Hemming raised his eyebrows at that.

"I'm a major in the Cuban army--the devil take it," explained
O'Rourke.

"The patriots escorted me to a hotel," he continued, "but the manager
looked at my banana-hued face and refused to have anything to do with
me at any price.  Failing in this, my tumultuous friends rushed me to
a wooden hospital, at the end of a river of brown sand which the
inhabitants of that town call an avenue.  I was put to bed in the
best room in the place, and then my friends hurried away, each one to
find his own doctor to offer me.  I was glad of the quiet, for I felt
about as beastly as a man can feel without flickering out entirely.
I don't think my insides just then would have been worth more than
two cents to any one but a medical student.  The matron--at least
that's what they called her--came in to have a look at me, and ask me
questions.  She was young, and she was pretty, and her impersonal
manner grieved me even then.  I might have been a dashed pacifico for
all the interest she showed in me, beyond taking my temperature and
ordering the fumigation of my clothes.  I wouldn't have felt so badly
about it if she had not been a lady--but she was, sure enough, and
her off-hand treatment very nearly made me forget my cramps and
visions of advancing land-crabs.  During the next few days I didn't
know much of anything.  When my head felt a little clearer, the
youthful matron brought me a couple of telegrams.  I asked her to
open them, and read them to me.  Evidently my Cuban friends had
reported the state of my health, and other things, for both telegrams
were tender inquiries after my condition.

"'You seem to be a person of some importance,' she said, regarding me
as if I were a specimen in a jar.

"'My name is O'Rourke,' I murmured.  For awhile she stared at me in a
puzzled sort of way.  Suddenly she blushed.

"'I beg your pardon, Mr. O'Rourke,' she said, and sounded as if she
meant it.  I felt more comfortable, and sucked my ration of milk and
lime-water with relish.  Next day the black orderly told me that the
matron was Miss Hudson, from somewhere up North.  He didn't know just
where.  I gave him a verbal order on the hospital for a dollar.

"Presently Miss Hudson came in and greeted me cheerfully.  'Why do
you want Harley to have a dollar?' she asked.

"'Just for a tip,' I replied, wearily.

"'He is paid to do his work, and if some patients fee him, the poorer
ones will suffer,' she said.

"'But I want him to have it, please.  He told me your name,' I said.

"She paid no more attention to this foolish remark than if I had
sneezed.  Indeed, even less, for if I had sneezed she would have
taken my pulse or my temperature.  I watched her as she moved about
the room seeing that all was clean and in order.

"'Miss Hudson,' I said, gaining courage, 'will you tell me what is
going on in the world?  Have you a New York paper?'

"'Yes, some papers have come for you,' she answered, 'and I will read
to you for a little while, if you feel strong enough to listen.
There is a letter, too.  Shall I open it for you?'

"She drew a chair between my bed and the window, and, first of all,
examined the letter.

"'From the New York News Syndicate,' she said.

"'Then it's only a check,' I sighed.

"'I shall put it away with the money you had when you came,' she
said.  She opened a paper, glanced at it, and wrinkled her white brow
at me.

"'Are you the Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke?" she asked.

"'No, indeed,' I replied.  'He has been dead a long time.  He was an
admiral in the British navy.'

"'I have never heard of him,' she answered, 'but there is a man with
that name who writes charming little stories, and verses, too, I
think.'

"'Oh, that duffer,' I exclaimed, faintly.

"She laughed quietly.  'There is an article about him here--at least
I suppose it is the same man.'  She glanced down the page and then up
at me.  'An angel unawares,' she laughed, and chaffed me kindly about
my modesty.

"After that we became better friends every day, though she often
laughed at the way some of the papers tried to make a hero of me.
That hurt me, because really I had gone through some awful messes,
and been sniped at a dozen times.  The Spaniards had a price on my
head.  I told her that, but she didn't seem impressed.  As soon as I
was able to see people, my friends the Cuban cigar manufacturers
called upon me, singly and in pairs, each with a gift of cigars.
These are out of their offerings.  The more they did homage to me,
the less seriously did Miss Hudson seem to regard my heroism.  But
she liked me--yes, we were good friends."

O'Rourke ceased talking and pensively flipped the ash off his cigar.
Leaning back in his chair, he stared at the ceiling.

"Well?" inquired his friend.  O'Rourke returned to the narration of
his experience with a visible effort.

"After awhile she read to me, for half an hour or so, every day.  One
evening she read a ballad of my own; by gad, it was fine.  But then,
even the _Journal_ sounded like poetry when she got hold of it.  From
that we got to talking about ourselves to each other, and she told me
that she had learned nursing, after her freshman year at Vassar,
because of a change in her father's affairs.  She had come South with
a wealthy patient, and, after his recovery, had accepted the position
of matron, or head nurse, of that little hospital.  In return, I
yarned away about my boyhood, my more recent adventures, my friends,
and my ambitions.  At last my doctor said I could leave the hospital,
but must go North right away.  My leg was healed, but otherwise I
looked and felt a wreck.  I was so horribly weak, and my nights
continued so crowded with suffering and delirium, that I feared my
constitution was ruined.  I tried to keep myself in hand when Miss
Hudson was around, but she surely guessed that I loved her."

"What's that?" interrupted Hemming.

"I said that I loved her," retorted O'Rourke, defiantly.

"Go ahead with the story," said the Englishman.

"When the time came for my departure," continued O'Rourke, "and the
carriage was waiting at the curb, I just kissed her hand and left
without saying a word.  I came North and got doctors to examine me.
They said that my heart and lungs were right as could be, and that
the rest of my gear would straighten up in time.  They promised even
a return of my complexion with the departure of the malaria from my
blood.  But I must live a quiet life for awhile, they said; so to
begin the quiet life I returned to Tampa, and that hospital.  But I
did not find the girl."

"Was she hiding?" inquired Hemming.  "Perhaps she had heard some
stories to your discredit."

"No," said O'Rourke, "she had resigned, and left the town, with her
father.  Evidently her troubles were ended--just as mine were begun."

"What did you do about it?" asked Hemming, whose interest was
thoroughly aroused.

"Oh, I looked for her everywhere--in Boston, and New York, and
Baltimore, and Washington, and read all the city directories,"
replied the disconsolate lover, "but I do not know her father's first
name, and you have no idea what a lot of Hudsons there are in the
world."

Hemming discarded the butt of his cigar, and eyed his friend
contemplatively.

"I suppose you looked in the registers of the Tampa hotels?" he
queried.  "The old chap's name and perhaps his address would be
there."

O'Rourke started from his chair, with dismay and shame written on his
face.

"Sit down and have another," said Hemming; "we'll look it up in a few
days."




CHAPTER X.

LIEUTENANT ELLIS IS CONCERNED

By the time Hemming and O'Rourke reached Tampa, about thirty thousand
men had gone under canvas in the surrounding pine groves and
low-lying waste places.  There were Westerners and Easterners,
regulars and volunteers, and at Port Tampa a regiment of coloured
cavalry.  Troops were arriving every day.  Colonel Wood and
Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, with their splendid command of mounted
infantry, had just pitched their shelter-tents in a place of scrub
palmetto, behind the big hotel.  Taken altogether, it was an army
that made Hemming stare.

The friends went to a quiet hotel with wide verandas, cool rooms,
open fireplaces, and what proved equally attractive, reasonable
rates.  They inquired of the clerk about Mr. Hudson.  He remembered
the gentleman well, though he had spent only two days in the place.
"He had a daughter with him," the man informed them, and, turning to
the front of the register, looked up the name.  "There's the
signature, sir, and you're welcome to it," he said.  The
correspondents examined it intently for some time.

"We know that _that_ means Hudson," remarked O'Rourke, at last, "and
I should guess _John_ for the other sprawl."

"Sprawl is good," said Hemming, straightening his monocle, "but any
one can see that _Robert_ is the name."

"I've put a lot of study on it," said the clerk, "and so has the
boss, and we've about agreed to call it _Harold_."

"Take your choice," said O'Rourke, "but tell me what you make of the
address."

"Boston," cried the clerk.

They stared at him.  "You were all ready," said Hemming.

"Yes, sir," he replied, "for I've been thinking it over for some
time."

"Why the devil didn't you ask him?" inquired O'Rourke, fretfully.

"Lookee here, colonel," said the hotel man, "if you know Mr. Hudson,
you know darn well why I didn't ask him where he came from."

"High and haughty?" queried O'Rourke.

The clerk nodded.

"You had better reconsider your course, old chap," laughed the
Englishman.

His friend did not reply.  He was again intent on the register.

"I make seven letters in it," he said, "and I'll swear to that for an
N."

"N nothing," remarked the clerk; "that's a B."

"Yes, it is a B, I think, and to me the word looks like--well, like
Balloon," said Hemming.

O'Rourke sighed.  "Of course it is New York; see the break in the
middle, and a man is more likely to come from there than from a
balloon," he said.

"Some men go away in balloons, sir," suggested the clerk.

Just then the proprietor of the hotel entered and approached the
desk.  He Was an imposing figure of a man, tall and deep, and
suitably dressed in the roomiest of light tweeds.  His face was round
and clever.  He shook hands with the new arrivals.

"Military men, I believe," he said.

"Not just now," replied Hemming.

"Do you know where Mr. Hudson is at present?" asked O'Rourke, in
casual tones.

"Mr. Hudson, of Philadelphia?  Why, no, sir, I can't say that I do,"
answered the big man.

"How do you know he's of Philadelphia?" asked the Englishman.

"He wrote it in the register; look for yourself," was the reply.

"No," said O'Rourke, mournfully, "but it is a very dry evening, and
if you will honour us with your company as far as the bar, Mr.--"

"Stillman,--delighted, sir," hastily replied the proprietor.

The three straightway sought that cool retreat, leaving the clerk to
brood, with wrinkled brow, above the puzzle so unconsciously donated
to him by a respectable one-time guest.

The weary delay in that town of sand and disorder at last came to an
end, and Hemming and O'Rourke, with their passports countersigned by
General Shafter, went aboard the _Olivette_.  Most of the newspaper
men were passengers on the same boat.  During the rather slow trip,
they made many friends and a few enemies.  One of the friends was a
youth with a camera, sent to take pictures for the same weekly paper
which O'Rourke represented.  The landing in Cuba of a part of the
invading forces and the correspondents was made at Baiquiri, on the
southern coast.  The woful mismanagement of this landing has been
written about often enough.  O'Rourke and Hemming, unable to procure
horses, set off toward Siboney on foot, and on foot they went through
to Santiago with the ragged, hungry, wonderful army.  They did their
work well enough, and were thankful when it was over.  Hemming
admired the American army--up to a certain grade.  Part of the time
they had a merry Toronto journalist for messmate, a peaceful family
man, who wore a round straw hat and low shoes throughout the
campaign.  During the marching (but not the fighting), O'Rourke
happened upon several members of his old command.  One of the
meetings took place at midnight, when the Cuban warrior was in the
act of carrying away Hemming's field-glasses and the Toronto man's
blanket.

After the surrender of Santiago, Hemming received word to cover Porto
Rico.  He started at the first opportunity in a gunboat that had once
been a harbour tug.  O'Rourke, who was anxious to continue his still
hunt for the lady who had nursed him, returned to Florida, and from
thence to New York.

In Porto Rico Hemming had an easy and pleasant time.  He struck up an
acquaintance that soon warmed to intimacy with a young volunteer
lieutenant of infantry, by name Ellis.  Ellis was a quiet,
well-informed youth; in civil life a gentleman-at-large with a
reputation as a golfer.  With his command of sixteen men he was
stationed just outside of Ponce, and under the improvised canvas
awning before his door he and Hemming exchanged views and
confidences.  One evening, while the red eyes of their green cigars
glowed and dimmed in the darkness, Hemming told of his first meeting
with O'Rourke.  He described the little boat tossing toward them from
the vast beyond, the poncho bellied with the wind, and the lean,
undismayed adventurer smoking at the tiller.  Ellis sat very quiet,
staring toward the white tents of his men.

"Is that the same O'Rourke who was once wounded in Cuba, and later
nearly died of fever in Tampa?" he asked, when Hemming was through.

"Yes, the same man," said Hemming, "and as decent a chap as ever put
foot in stirrup.  Do you know him?"

"No, but I have heard a deal about him," replied the lieutenant.  It
did not surprise Hemming that a man should hear about O'Rourke.
Surely the good old chap had worked hard enough (in his own daring,
vagrant way) for his reputation.  He brushed a mosquito away from his
neck, and smoked on in silence.

"I have heard a--a romance connected with your friend O'Rourke," said
Ellis, presently, in a voice that faltered.  Hemming pricked up his
ears at that.

"So have I.  Tell me what you have heard," he said.

"It is not so much what I've heard, as who I heard it from," began
the lieutenant, "and it's rather a personal yarn.  I met a girl, not
long ago, and we seemed to take to each other from the start.  I saw
her frequently, and I got broken up on her.  Then I found out that,
though she liked me better than any other fellow in sight, she did
not love me one little bit.  She admired my form at golf, and
considered my conversation edifying, but when it came to love, why,
there was some one else.  Then she told me about O'Rourke.  She had
nursed him in Tampa for several months, just before the time old
Hudson had recaptured his fortune."

"O'Rourke told me something about it," said Hemming.  "He thought, at
the time, that he was an invalid for life, so he did not let her know
how he felt about her.  Afterward the doctors told him he was sound
as a bell, and ever since--barring this last Cuban business--he has
been looking for her."

"But he does not know that she loves him?" queried Ellis.

"I really couldn't say," replied Hemming.

Ellis shifted his position, and with deft fingers rerolled the leaf
of his moist cigar.  In a dim sort of way he wondered if he could
give up the girl.  In time, perhaps, she would love him--if he could
keep O'Rourke out of sight.  A man in the little encampment began to
sing a sentimental negro melody.  The clear, sympathetic tenor rang,
like a bugle-call, across the stagnant air.  A banjo, with its wilful
pathos, tinkled and strummed.

"Listen! that is Bolls, my sergeant.  He is a member of the Harvard
Glee Club," said the lieutenant.

Hemming listened, and the sweet voice awoke the bitter memories.
Presently he asked: "What is Miss Hudson's address?"

"She is now in Europe, with her father," replied his companion.
"Their home is in Marlow, New York State."

"May I let O'Rourke know?" asked Hemming.

"Certainly," replied Ellis, scarce above a whisper.  He wondered what
nasty, unsuspected devil had sprung to power within him, keeping him
from telling that the home in Marlow was by this time in the hands of
strangers, and that the Hudsons intended living in New York after
their return from Europe.

O'Rourke had asked Hemming to write to him now and then, to the Army
and Navy Club at Washington, where the letters would be sure to find
him sooner or later; so Hemming wrote him the glad information from
Porto Rico.




CHAPTER XI.

HEMMING DRAWS HIS BACK PAY

Hemming walked down Broadway on the morning of a bright November day.
The hurrying crowds on the pavements, however weary at heart, looked
glad and eager in the sunlight.  The stir of the wide street got into
his blood, and he stepped along with the air of one bound upon an
errand that promised more than money.  He entered a cigar store, and
filled his case with Turkish cigarettes.  Some newspapers lay on the
counter, but he turned away from them, for he was sick of news.
Further along, he glanced into the windows of a book-shop.  His gaze
alighted upon the figure of a Turkish soldier.  Across the width of
the sheet ran the magic words, "Where Might Is Right.  A Book of the
Greco-Turkish War.  By Herbert Hemming."

As one walks in a dream, Hemming entered the shop.  "Give me a copy
of that book," he said.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" inquired the shopman.

Hemming recovered his wits.

"I want a copy of 'Where Might Is Right,' by Hemming," he said.  He
laid aside his gloves and stick, and opened the book with loving
hands.  His first book.  The pride of it must have been very apparent
on his tanned face, for the man behind the counter smiled.

"I have read that book myself," ventured the man.  "I always read a
book that I sell more than twenty copies of in one day."

Hemming glowed, and continued his scrutiny of the volume.  On one of
the first pages was printed, "Authorized American Edition."  The name
of the publishers was S----'s Sons.

"Where do S----'s Sons hang out?" he asked, as he paid for the book.

"Just five doors below this," said the man.

"I'll look in there," decided Hemming, "before I call on Dodder."

The war correspondent was cordially received by the head of the great
publishing house.  He was given a comprehensive account of the
arrangements made between his London and New York publishers, and
these proved decidedly satisfactory.  The business talk over, Hemming
prepared to go.

"I hope you will look me up again before you leave town," said the
head of the firm, as they shook hands.

Arrived in the outer office of the New York News Syndicate, Hemming
inquired for Mr. Dodder.  The clerk stared at him with so strange an
expression that his temper suffered.

"Well, what the devil is the matter?" he exclaimed.

"Mr. Dodder is dead," replied the youth.  Just then Wells came from
an inner room, caught sight of the Englishman, and approached.

"So you're back, are you?" he remarked, with his hands in his
pockets.  Hemming was thinking of the big, kind-hearted manager, and
replied by asking the cause of his death.  "Apoplexy.  Are you ready
to sail for the Philippines?  Why didn't you wait in Porto Rico for
orders?" he snapped.

"Keep cool, my boy," said Hemming's brain to Hemming's heart.
Hemming himself said, with painful politeness: "I can be ready in two
days, Mr. Wells, but first we must make some new arrangements as to
expenses and salary."

"Do you think you are worth more than you get?" sneered Wells.  "Has
that book that you wrote, when we were paying you to do work for us,
given you a swelled head?"

Hemming was about to reply when an overgrown young man, a bookkeeper,
who had been listening, nudged his elbow roughly.

"Here's your mail," he said.

Hemming placed the half-dozen letters in his pocket.  His face was
quite pale, considering the length of time he had been in the
tropics.  He took the overgrown youth by the front of his jacket and
shook him.  Then he twirled him deftly and pushed him sprawling
against his enraged employer.  Both went down, swearing viciously.
The other inmates of the great room stared and waited.  Most of them
looked pleased.  An office boy, who had received notice to leave that
morning, sprang upon a table.  "Soak it to 'em, Dook.  Soak it to
'em, you bang-up Chawley.  Dey can't stand dat sort o' health food."

Wells got to his feet.  The bookkeeper scrambled up and rushed at
Hemming.  He was received in a grip that made him repent his action.

"Mr. Wells," said Hemming, "I shall hold on to this gentleman, who
does not seem to know how to treat his superiors, until he cools off,
and in the meantime I'll trouble you for what money is due me, up to
date.  Please accept my resignation at the same time."

"I'll call a copper," sputtered Wells.

The door opened, and the head of the publishing house of S----'s Sons
entered.

"Good Lord, what is the trouble?" he cried.

"I am trying to draw my pay," explained Hemming.

The new arrival looked at the ruffled, confused Wells with eyes of
contempt and suspicion.

"I'll wait for you, Mr. Hemming, on condition that you will lunch
with me," he cried.

A few minutes later they left the building, and in his pocket Hemming
carried a check for the sum of his back pay.

"In a month from now," said his companion, "that concern will not be
worth as much as your check is written for.  Even poor old Dodder had
all he could do to hold it together.  He had the brains and decency,
and that fellow had the money."

By the time lunch was over, Hemming found himself once more in
harness, but harness of so easy a fit that not a buckle galled.  The
billet was a roving commission from S----'s Sons to do articles of
unusual people and unusual places for their illustrated weekly
magazine.  He spent the afternoon in reading and writing letters.  He
advised every one with whom he had dealings of his new headquarters.
He had a good collection of maps, and sat up until three in the
morning pondering over them.  Next day he bought himself a camera,
and overhauled his outfit.  By the dawn of the third day after his
separation from the syndicate, he had decided to start northward,
despite the season.

The clamour of battle was no longer his guide.  Now the Quest of the
Little-Known was his.  It brought him close to many hearths, and
taught him the hearts of all sorts and conditions of men.  In the
span of a few years, it made him familiar with a hundred villages
between Nain in the North and Rio de Janeiro in the South.  He found
comfort under the white lights of strange cities, and sought peace in
various wildernesses.  Under the canvas roof and the bark, as under
the far-shining shelters of the town, came ever the dream of his old
life for bedfellow.



END OF PART I.




PART TWO



CHAPTER I.

THE UNSUSPECTED CITY

Hemming happened upon the city of Pernamba on the evening of a sultry
day in April.  He manifested no surprise beyond straightening his
monocle in his eye.

"Hope they have some English soda-water down there," he said to the
heavy foliage about him, "but I suppose it would be hardly fair to
expect an ice factory so far from the coast."  For a second a vision
of tall glasses and ice that clinked came to his mind's eye.  He
remembered the cool dining-rooms of his friends in Pernambuco.  He
spurred his native-bred steed to a hesitating trot along the narrow,
hoof-worn path that led down to the valley.  At a mud and timber hut
set beneath banana-trees, and backed by a tiny field, he drew rein.
A woman sat before the door, looking cool and at ease in her scanty
cotton dress.  A naked child chased a pig among the bananas.  Hemming
greeted the woman in Portuguese.  She gave him humble greeting in
return.  The pig and the baby came near to listen.  Hemming swung his
feet free from the stirrups, to straighten the kink out of his knees.
He pushed back his pith helmet, and lit a cigarette.

"What is the name of the town?" he asked, smiling reassuringly.

The woman told him, standing respectfully on the earthen threshold.
Such square shoulders and clear eyes as this Englishman's were not
every-day sights in Pernamba.

"May a stranger find entertainment there?" he inquired.

"Yes," she replied, "and the great man who owns it is generous to
strangers.  He is a big man, full of wisdom, smoking eternally a
yellow cigar not of this country."

Hemming dismounted, the better to rest his horse.  Although he had
ridden all that day and the day before, he felt no fatigue himself.
The tropical sun, the narrow water-cut paths, and the clambering
vines held in the heated air and luring him with strange flowers,
brought him no terror.  But he polished his monocle and sighed
uneasily, for his store of _milreis_ had dwindled since leaving
Pernambuco a week before to a sum equalling about eleven pounds in
English money.

"Has this man an army?" he asked.

"Truly a great army," replied the woman, "for I have seen it myself,
riding after thieves.  It numbers five hundred men, all armed, and
wearing white tunics, and all paid for by this man.  He must be
richer than a king to support so grand an army."

Hemming smiled toward the white and red roofs and clumps of foliage
in the valley, thinking, maybe, of his own old regiment, of Aldershot
during a review, of the hill batteries that had supported the
infantry advance in India, and of the fifty regiments under canvas in
Tampa.

"I crave a drink," he said,--"a finger of your good casash in a bowl
of cool water."

The woman brought it, smiling with hospitality, and would not accept
the ragged bill which he held out to her.

"It is a pleasure," cried she, "to slake the thirst of so
distinguished a señor."

Hemming bowed gravely, a smile lifting his upturned, pale moustache.
The baby came close, on all fours, and examined his yellow
riding-boots and straight spurs.  Hemming patted the small one's limp
black hair.

"This is a kindly world," he said in English, then to the woman: "Let
thy son wear this ring,--see, it fits his thumb.  Should any man ask
the name of his friend, say it is Hemming, an Englishman."

He pushed the child gently toward its mother, and, swinging to his
saddle, rode down toward the city.  His gray eyes took in
everything,--the yellowing fruit, the fields of cane, the mud huts of
the poor, the thin horses of the charcoal-burners crowding out of the
trail to let him pass, and the patches of manioc.

All this he beheld with satisfaction.  In a thin book he made a note,
thus: "Pernamba, name of town evidently run by a governor of
independent spirit.  Army of 500, evidently mounted infantry.
Welcomed to outskirts of city by kind peasant woman, evening of April
6, 19--.  Same climate and crops as rest of Brazil.  Eleven pounds in
my pockets in Brazilian notes and small coin.  What does Pernamba
hold for H.H. I wonder?  A dinner or two, perhaps, and a couple of
chapters for my book."

Presently the twisting path met a highway between royal palms.
Good-sized villas, their walls all blue and white with glazed tiles,
their roofs dusky red, or else flat and railed about with white
stones, each in its separate garden.  The gardens were enclosed by
high walls of brick, such as he had seen many times in the resident
sections of Pernambuco.  For months he had lived in just such a
house, and lolled in just such a garden.

"The old Dutch influence," he said, tossing his cigarette over the
nearest wall.  A bullock-cart came creaking along the road, the
patient cattle, with heads held low and a straight yoke across their
wrinkled necks, the driver walking at their heels, sombre with dust,
and daintily puffing a cigarette.  The cart was loaded with sacks of
sugar, which sent up a heavy, sickly smell.  Hemming hailed the
driver.

"Where does the governor live, my friend?"

"The President, señor?  There behind the white panthers."  With the
stock of his rawhide whip, the fellow pointed to an iron gate, set
between posts of red brick, topped with marble panthers.  Each
panther held a shield between its front paws.  Hemming threw the
bullock-driver a coin, and rode on the pavement, the better to
examine the armorial design on the shields.  He laughed softly.

"Familiar," he said, "ah, yes, a good enough old Devonshire shield.
I have admired it in the dining-room of the Governor of Newfoundland.
Now I doff my hat to it at the entrance of a president's residence.
Dash it all, I have outgrown dismay, and a jolly good thing, too."
He flecked a leaf off his knee with the tip of his glove.

"Queer I never heard about this before,--and what the deuce is a
Brazilian doing with those arms?  Can this be where that crazy
American whom old Farrington told me about hangs out?"  His brow
cleared, and he bowed to the expressionless panthers.

A sentry, who had been standing a few paces off, with a cavalry sabre
at his shoulder and a cigarette in his mouth, now drew near and
saluted.  Hemming returned the salute sharply.  This same custom of
smoking on sentry-go had jarred on him many a time in Pernambuco.  He
had noticed the same thing in Bahia.

"I would see the President," he said, and passed his card to the
soldier.  From a small guard-house just inside the wall came several
more white-clad men.  One of these hurried away with Hemming's card,
and presently returned.  The gates were swung wide open; Hemming rode
in at a dress-parade trot, travel-stained, straight of back, his
monocle flashing in his eye.  Soldiers posted here and there among
the palms and roses and trim flower-beds stood at attention as he
passed.

He drew rein and dismounted at the foot of the marble steps.  A tall,
heavily built man, dressed in a black frock coat and white trousers,
came down to meet him.  A man in livery took his horse.

"Mr. Hemming," said the large man, "I am the President."  He popped a
fat, yellow cigar into his mouth, and shook hands.  "Come in," he
said.  He led the way into a large tiled room, containing a
billiard-table of the American kind, a roll-top desk, and an office
chair.  The windows of the room were all on one side, and opened on a
corner of the gardens, in which a fountain tossed merrily.  The
President sank into a chair in the easiest manner, and threw one leg
over the arm of it.  Then he noticed, with a quick twinkle in his
blue eyes, Hemming in the middle of the floor, erect and unsmiling.

"Mr. Hemming," he said, "I want your respect, but none of that
stiff-backed ceremony between gentlemen.  I am neither Roosevelt nor
Albert Edward.  Even Morgan is a bigger man than I am, though I still
hope.  You have been in the English army, and you like to have things
starched; well, so do I sometimes.  Please fall into that chair."

Hemming blushed and sat down.  The man was evidently crazy.  "My name
is Tetson," said the President.  He rang the bell and a native
servant entered.

"Thank you, a Scotch and soda," said Hemming.

"Ah, I knew it," laughed the other, "though I always take rye myself."

The servant bowed and retired.

"I see the illustrated weeklies of both New York and London,"
continued Tetson, "and I always look for your articles.  I like them.
I know something about your family, also, Hemming.  I have 'Burke's
Landed Gentry' and 'Who's Who' on my desk.  You are a grandson of Sir
Bertram Hemming of Barracker."

"Yes," replied Hemming, both surprised and embarrassed.

"Well," said the President, "I have some blood in me, too.  My
mother's grandmother was a Gostwycke.  Did you notice the three stars
and six choughs?"

"I know the head of your house at home, Colonel Bruce-Gostwycke, and
another distinguished member of it in the colonies, Sir Henry
Renton," replied Hemming.  "But," he continued, briskly, twisting his
moustache, "you are something bigger than that here.  Why do you hold
this little half-dead county family so high?"

"My mother in New York taught me to," replied Tetson, "and then this
business is different.  I did it, as you Englishmen say, off my own
bat.  A pile of money, a lot of gall, a little knowledge of the
weakness of men in office,--this is all about it.  Even now most of
my friends think me a fool."  He gravely relit his yellow cigar.  The
reek of it was worse than jerked beef to Hemming.  "I will tell you
my story some day, but now you want a shower-bath and a change.
Please consider yourself at home.  Sudden friendships may not be good
form in England, but they are all right back here."

"Ah," said Hemming, "I have brushed about a bit; I'm not such a--so
English as I look."

Tetson turned to the servant: "Tell Smith to look after Mr. Hemming.
Smith is a handy man.  You will find all kinds of cigarettes in his
keeping, and we shall dine at eight.  If you feel hungry in the
meantime, tell Smith."

He arose and shook hands.  Hemming followed the servant, inwardly
wondering, outwardly calm.  He had met many strange people in his
adventurous life, and had become accustomed to luck of every kind,
but this big President, with the yellow cigar, was beyond anything he
had ever dreamed.

"I am glad I was born with imagination, and have enjoyed the
enlightening society of O'Rourke in so many strange places," he
thought.

Smith proved to be a clean-shaven man, all in white and brass
buttons.  Hemming surveyed him with interest.

"I see that you are an Englishman, Smith," he said.

"No, sir," replied Smith, in faultless tones.  "I was born on the
Bowery.  But I have been in London, sir, yes, sir, with Mr. Tetson.
We haven't always lived in this 'ere 'ole."

It seemed to Hemming that the h's had been dropped with a certain
amount of effort on the man's part, and that his eyes twinkled in a
quite uncalled-for way.  But it did not bother him now.  Even a valet
may be allowed his joke.

Soon he was enjoying the luxury of a shower-bath in a great, cool
room, standing by itself in a vineyard and rose garden.  The shower
fell about six feet before it touched his head.  The roof of the
building was open to the peak, and a subdued light, leaf-filtered,
came down through a glass tile set in among the earthen ones.  The
walls and floor were of white and blue tiles.  The bath was of
marble, as large as an English billiard-table, and not unlike the
shallow basin of a fountain.

Cool and vigorous, Hemming stepped from the bath, replaced his
eye-glass, and lit a cigarette.  Swathed in a white robe, with his
feet in native slippers, he unlocked the door and issued into the
scented garden air.  Smith awaited him in the vine-covered alley,
holding a "swizzle" on a silver tray.  He drained the glass, and,
lifting up the hem of his robe, followed the valet back to the
dressing-room.  Chameleons darted across his path, and through the
palms floated the ringing notes of a bugle-call.

"I found your razors and your brushes in the saddle-bags," announced
Smith, "and these shirts, sir, I bought, guessing at your size, and--"

"What is this?" interrupted Hemming, holding aloft a white jacket
heavy with gold.

"Mess jacket of our regiment, sir.  The President would feel honoured
if you would wear it.  And these trousers were sent in by one of the
native officers, with his compliments," replied the valet.

Hemming curtly intimated his readiness to dress.  Smith closed the
shutters, turned on the lights, and examined a couple of razors.

Twenty minutes later, Herbert Hemming, in the mess uniform of a
colonel in the President of Pernamba's army, was ushered into the
presence of the family, and a certain Mr. Valentine Hicks.




CHAPTER II.

THE SPORTING PRESIDENT

The President's name was Harris William Tetson.  His wife had been
Mary Appleton, born of cultured parents in Philadelphia.  She
welcomed Hemming in the most friendly manner.  The third member of
the family was a tall girl, with a soft voice and an English accent.
She shook hands with Hemming, and he noticed that the pressure of her
hand was firm and steady, like that of a man's.  She wore glasses.
The light from the shaded candles glowed warm on her white neck and
arms.  Hemming had not expected to find any one like this in the
interior of South America.  He used to know girls like her at home,
and one in particular flashed into his memory with a pang of
bitterness.  In his agitation, he almost overlooked the extended hand
of Mr. Valentine Hicks.

The dinner was of great length.  A few of the dishes were American,
but most were of the country.  Two dusky servants waited upon the
diners.  The claret was to Hemming's taste, and, as he listened to
Miss Tetson describe an incident of her morning's ride, a feeling of
rest and homeliness came to him.  A little wind stole in from the
roses and fountains, and the man of wars and letters, great dreams
and unsung actions, saw, with wondering eyes, that it loosened a red
petal from the roses at her shoulder and dropped it upon her white
arm.  He looked up sharply, and only the light of genial friendship
remained in the eyes that met those of Valentine Hicks.  But Hicks
looked sulky; understanding came to the heart of Hemming.  At last
the dinner came to an end, and Tetson dropped the subject of freight
on sugar, and took up the lighter one of real estate.  Coffee was
brought; no one listened to Tetson, but he prosed on, his
good-natured face turned toward the shadows in the ceiling, a yellow
cigar stuck jauntily in his mouth.  Hemming was busy with his own
thoughts, wondering into what nest of lunatics his free-lancing had
brought him.  He longed for O'Rourke's help.  The girl drew something
from her bodice, and laid it before him.  It was a cigarette-case.

"You may take one, if you do not bore us by looking shocked," she
said.

Hemming drew forth a cigarette, and lit it at the nearest candle.
"As to being shocked," he replied, "why, I used to know a girl who--"
he stopped suddenly and glanced down at his coffee.  "Of course it is
quite the thing now," he added, in stilted tones.

Hicks refused a cigarette from the silver case, and moodily puffed at
a black native cigar.  Mrs. Tetson did not smoke, but entertained the
others with a description of her first and only attempt at the
recreation.

The little wind died away.  Outside, the fountain splashed sleepily.
The blood-red petal fell from the girl's arm to the whiter cloth.  A
flame-bewildered moth bungled into the President's coffee.  Hemming's
workaday brain was lulled to repose, and now he was only Hemming the
poet.  He looked into the eyes across the table.  But he had lived so
long with men, and the foolish, evident affairs of generals and
statesmen, that Miss Tetson's glances were as weapons for which he
knew no manual of defence.  They touched him more than he liked,
awaking in his hitherto disciplined memory a hundred fibres of broken
dreams.  And every fibre tingled like a nerve with a sweetness sharp
as pain,--and time swung back, and all the healing of his long exile
was undone.

When the ladies rose from the table, Mr. Tetson came over to Hemming
and nudged him confidentially.  He looked very sly.  "What d'ye say
to a game of billiards?" he whispered.

"Delighted," murmured Hemming, relieved that his strange host had not
suggested something worse.

"I like the game," continued Tetson, "but as Hicks is a damn fool at
it, I don't indulge very often.  Hicks is too young, anyway,--a nice
fellow, but altogether too young for men to associate with.  Trotting
'round with the girls is more in his line."

"Really," remarked the newcomer, uneasily.  He was not quite sure
whether or not Hicks had got out of ear-shot.

"Fact," said the President,--"cold truth.  Marion can't play, either.
I've had Santosa up several times for a game, but he's too dashed
respectful to beat me.  You'll not be that way, Hemming?"

"I should hope not," replied Hemming, absently, his eyes still turned
toward the door through which the rest of the party had vanished.

"What d'ye say to five dollars the game?" Tetson whispered.  The
adventurer's heart sank, but he followed his host to the
billiard-room with an unconcerned air.  They played until past
midnight, the President in his shirt-sleeves, with the yellow cigar
smouldering always.  A servant marked for them, and another uncorked
the soda-water.  After the last shot had been made, Valentine Hicks
strolled in, with his hands in his pockets and his brow clouded.

"Did the old man do you?" he inquired of Hemming.

The free-lance shook his head.  "I took ten pounds away from him," he
said.

The secretary whistled.




CHAPTER III.

THE POST OF HONOUR.--THE SECRETARY'S AFFAIR

Hemming awoke with a clear head, despite the President's whiskey, and
remembered, with satisfaction, the extra ten pounds.  His windows
were wide open, and a cool dawn wind came in across the gardens.  He
threw aside the sheet and went over to the middle window, and,
finding that the ledge extended to form a narrow balcony, stepped
outside.  Away to the right, he could mark a bend of the river by the
low-lying mist.  He sniffed the air.  "There is fever in it," he
said, and wondered how many kinds of a fool Mr. Tetson was.  He was
sorry for the ladies.  They did not look like the kind of people to
enjoy being shut away from the world in such a God-forsaken hole as
this.  Why didn't the old ass start a town on the coast? he asked
himself.  While engaged in these puzzling reflections, Smith rapped
at the door, and entered.  He carried coffee, a few slices of dry
toast, and a jug of shaving-water.

"Will you ride this morning, sir?" he asked.

"Why, yes," replied Hemming, and said he would be shaved before
drinking his coffee.  As the valet lathered his chin, he asked if the
President rode every morning.

"Not 'e, sir," replied the man, "but Miss Tetson does, and Mr. 'Icks."

Hemming found his well-worn riding-breeches brushed and folded, his
boots and spurs shining like the sun, and a new cotton tunic ready
for him.  He looked his surprise at sight of the last article.

"You didn't give me any order, sir," explained the man, "but, bein'
as I'm a bit of a tilor myself, I thought as 'ow you wouldn't mind--"

Hemming interrupted him with uplifted hand.

"It was very kind of you," he said, "and I am sure it is an excellent
fit.  See if you can't find a sovereign among that change on the
table."

As he rode through the great gates, Hemming caught sight of Miss
Tetson along the road.  At sound of his horse's hoofs, she turned in
her saddle and waved her hand.  He touched his little white stallion
into that renowned sliding run that had made it famous in Pernambuco.
They rode together for over an hour.  Hicks did not turn out that
morning.

Mr. Valentine Hicks was young, and an American.  Though he had been
born in Boston, he lacked something in breeding,--a very shadowy
something that would correct itself as life took him in hand.  Though
he had been an undergraduate of Harvard University for two years, he
displayed to Hemming's mind a childish ignorance of men and books.
No doubt he had practised the arts of drop-kicking and tackling with
distinction, for he was big and well muscled.  He was distantly
connected with the Tetsons, and had joined them in Pernamba soon
after their arrival in the country, and two years previous to the
opening of this narrative, to act as Tetson's private secretary.  At
first Mr. Hicks looked with suspicion upon the wandering Englishman.
He was in an unsettled frame of mind at the time, poor fellow.  He
saw in Hemming a dangerous rival to his own monopoly of Miss Tetson.
Already the lady was talking about some sort of book the duffer had
written.

A few days after Hemming's arrival, the army, to the number of four
hundred rank and file and twenty-six officers, was drawn up for the
President's inspection.  Hemming rode with Tetson, and the little
brown soldiers wondered at the frosty glitter of his eye-glass.  His
mount was the same upon which he had entered the country,--a white,
native-bred stallion, the gift of one McPhey, a merchant in
Pernambuco.  Miss Tetson and Hicks, each followed by a groom, trotted
aimlessly about the waiting ranks, much to Hemming's disgust.  Tetson
lit the inevitable yellow weed.

"What do you think of them?" he asked, waving his hand toward the
troops.

"They look to me as if they were stuffed with bran," answered the
Englishman, "and their formation is all wrong."

"Ah," said Tetson, sadly crestfallen.

Presently he touched Hemming's knee.

"If you will take them in hand,--the whole lopsided consignment, from
the muddy-faced colonel down,--why, I'll be your everlasting friend,"
he said.

Hemming stared at them, pondering.

"It will mean enemies for me," he replied.

"No, I can answer for everything but their drill," said the other.

Hemming saluted, and, wheeling the white stallion, rode alone up and
down the uneven ranks.  His face was set in severe lines, but behind
the mask lurked mirth and derision at the pettiness of his
high-styled office.

"Commander-in-chief," he said, and, putting his mount to a canter,
completely circled his command in a fraction of a minute.

"I shall begin to lick them into shape to-morrow," he said to Tetson.

The little officers, clanging their big cavalry sabres, marched their
little brown troops away to the barracks.  The President looked
wistfully after them, and said: "I can mount three hundred of them,
Hemming.  I call it a pretty good army, for all its lack of style."

"I call it half a battalion of duffers," said Hemming to himself.

Later, the new commander-in-chief and the private secretary sat
together in the former's quarters.

"I do not quite understand this Pernamba idea," said Hemming.  "Is it
business, or is it just an unusual way of spending money?"

"I don't know what the old man is driving at myself," replied Hicks,
"but of one thing I am sure: there's more money put into it than
there is in it.  The army is a pretty expensive toy, for instance.
Just what it is for I do not know.  The only job it ever tried was
collecting rents, and it made a mess of that.  We don't sell enough
coffee in a year to stand those duffers a month's pay.  We get
skinned right and left back here and down on the coast.  Mr. Tetson
thinks he still possesses a clear business head, but the fact is he
cannot understand his own bookkeeping.  It's no fun running a
hundred-square-mile ranch, with a fair-sized town thrown in."

Hemming wrinkled his forehead, and stared vacantly out of the window.
Below him a gray parrot, the property of Miss Tetson, squawked in an
orange-tree.

"If I had money, I should certainly live somewhere else.  Why the
devil he keeps his wife and daughter here, I don't see."

Just then the secretary caught the faint strumming of a banjo, and
left hurriedly, without venturing an explanation.  He found Miss
Tetson in her favourite corner of the garden, where roses grew
thickest, and breadfruit-trees made a canopy of green shade.  A
fountain splashed softly beside the stone bench whereon she sat, and
near by stood a little brown crane watching the water with eyes like
yellow jewels.

The girl had changed from her riding-habit into a white gown, such as
she wore almost every day.  But now Hicks saw her with new eyes.  She
seemed to him more beautiful than he had dreamed a woman could be.
Yesterday he had thought, in his indolent way, that he loved her.
Now he knew it, and his heart seemed to leap and pause in a mad sort
of fear.  The look of well-fed satisfaction passed away from him.  He
stood there between the roses like a fool,--he who had come down to
the garden so carelessly, with some jest on his lips.

"Something will happen now," she said, and smiled up at him.  Hicks
wondered what she meant.

"It is too hot to have anything happen," he replied.

"That is the matter with us,--it is too hot, always too hot, and we
are too tired," she said, "but Mr. Hemming does not seem to mind the
heat.  I think that something interesting will happen now."

This was like a knife in the man's heart, for he was learning to like
the Englishman.

The girl looked at the little crane by the fountain.  Hicks stood for
a moment, trying to smile.  But it was hard work to look as if he did
not care.  "Lord, what an ass I have been," he said to himself, but
aloud he stammered something about their rides together, and their
friendship.

"Oh, you can ride very well," she laughed, "but--"

She did not finish the remark, and the secretary, after a painful
scrutiny of the silent banjo in her lap, went away to the stables and
ordered his horse.  But a man is a fool to ride hard along the bank
of a Brazilian river in the heat of the afternoon.

From one of the windows of his cool room, Hemming watched the
departure of the President's private secretary.  He remembered what
Tetson had said of the boy,--"too young to associate with men."

But youth is a thing easily mended, thought Hemming.
Somehow--perhaps only in size--Hicks recalled O'Rourke to his mind;
and back to him came the days of their good-comradeship.  He wondered
where O'Rourke was now, and what he was busy about.  He had seen him
last in Labrador, where they had spent a month together, salmon
fishing, and up to that time O'Rourke had found no trace of Miss
Hudson.  Ellis's information had proved useless.  Disgusted at the
deception practised upon him, the poor fellow had ceased to speak of
the matter, even with his dearest friend during night-watches by the
camp-fire.




CHAPTER IV.

THE THING THAT HAPPENED

Hicks came along the homeward road at dusk.  Lights were glowing
above the strong walls and behind the straight trunks of the palms.
A mist that one might smell lay along the course of the river.  Hicks
rode heavily and with the air of one utterly oblivious to his
surroundings.  But at the gateway of the officers' mess he looked up.
Captain Santosa was in the garden, a vision of white and gold and
dazzling smile.  He hurried to the gate.

"Ah, my dear Hicks, you are in time for our small cocktails, and then
dinner.  But for this riding so hard, I can call you nothing but a
fool."

"Thanks very much," replied the American, dismounting slowly, "and as
to what you call me, old man, I'm not at all particular."  The
woebegone expression of his plump face was almost ludicrous.

Santosa whistled, and presently an orderly came and took Valentine's
horse.  The two entered the building arm in arm, and the secretary
swayed as he walked.

Five or six of the native officers were already in the mess-room,
swallowing mild swizzles, and talking quietly.  They greeted Hicks
affectionately.

"This man," said Santosa, "had his horse looking like a
shaving-brush, and I know nothing in English so suitable to call him
as this," and he swore vigorously in Portuguese.

"Stow that rot," said Hicks, "can't you see I'm fit as a fiddle; and
for Heaven's sake move some liquor my way, will you?"  His request
was speedily complied with, and he helped himself recklessly from the
big decanter.

The dinner was long and hot, and Valentine Hicks, forgetting utterly
his Harvard manner, dropped his head on the table, between his
claret-glass and coffee-cup, and dreamed beastly dreams.  The swarthy
Brazilians talked and smoked, and sent away the decanters to be
refilled.  The stifling air held the tobacco smoke above the table.
The cotton-clad servants moved on noiseless feet.

"These Americans,--dear heaven," spoke a fat major, softly.

"I am fond of Hicks," said Santosa, laying his hand on the youth's
unconscious shoulder.  A slim lieutenant, who had held a commission
in a Brazilian regiment stationed in Rio, looked at the captain.

"The Americans are harmless," he said.  "They mind their own
business,--or better still, they let us mind it for them.  The
President--bah!  And our dear Valentine.  If he gets enough to eat,
and clothes cut in the English way, and some one to listen to his
little stories of how he used to play golf at Harvard, he is content.
But this Englishman,--this Señor Hemming,--he is quite different."

"Did not you at one time play golf?" asked Santosa, calmly.

"Three times, in Florida," replied the lieutenant, "and with me
played a lady, who talked at her ease and broke two clubs in one
morning.  She was of a fashionable convent named Smith, but this did
not deter her from the free expression of her thoughts."

"Stir up Señor Hicks, that we may hear two fools at the same time,"
said the colonel.

"Take my word for it, colonel, that Valentine is not a fool," said
Santosa, lightly.  "He is very young."

"Have you nothing to say for me?" asked the slim lieutenant,
good-naturedly.

"You know what I think of you all," replied Santosa, without heat.
The conversation was carried on in Portuguese, and now ran into angry
surmises as to the President's reason for placing Hemming in command.

It was close upon midnight when Hicks awoke.  He straightened himself
in his chair and blinked at Santosa, who alone, of the whole mess,
remained at table.

"You have had a little nap," said the Brazilian.

Hicks looked at him for awhile in silence.  Then he got to his feet,
and leaned heavily on the table.

"I'll walk home, old tea-cosey.  Tell your nigger to give my gee
something to eat, will you?"

"You do not look well, my dear Valentine.  You had better stay here
until morning," said Santosa.

Hicks swore, and then begged the other's pardon.

"Am I drunk, old chap?  Do I look that way?" he asked.

Captain Santosa laughed.  "You look like a man with a grudge against
some one," he answered.  "Perhaps you have a touch of fever,
otherwise I know you would have good taste enough to conceal the
grudge.  A gentleman suffers--and smiles."

It was past two o'clock in the morning, and Hemming was lying flat on
his back, smoking a cigarette in the dark.  He had been writing
verses, and letters which he did not intend to mail, until long past
midnight.  And now he lay wide-eyed on his bed, kept awake by the
restless play of his thoughts.

His windows were all open, and he could hear a stirring of wind in
the crests of the taller trees.  His reveries were disturbed by a
stumbling of feet in the room beyond, and suddenly Valentine Hicks
stood in the doorway.  By the faint light Hemming made out the big,
drooping shoulders and the attitude of weariness.  He sat up quickly,
and pushed his feet into slippers.

"That you, Hicks?" he asked.

"Don't talk to me, you damn traitor!" said Hicks.

Hemming frowned, and tossed his cigarette into the night.

"If you will be so good as to turn on the light, I'll get the
quinine," he said.

The secretary laughed.

"Quinine!" he cried; "you fool!  I believe an Englishman would
recommend some blasted medicine to a man in hell."

"You're not there yet," replied Hemming.  He was bending over an open
drawer of his desk, feeling about among papers and bottles for the
box of pills.  Hicks drew something from his pocket and laid it
softly on the table.

"Good morning," he said.  "I intended to kick up a row but I've
changed my mind.  Hand over your pills and I'll go to bed."

When he awoke next day, it was only to a foolish delirium.  The
doctor looked at him, and then at Hemming.

"I suppose you can give it a name," he said.

Hemming nodded.

"I've had it myself," he replied.

The President, followed by his daughter, came into the room.  Hicks
recognized the girl.

"Marion," he said, and when she bent over him, "something has
happened after all."

She looked up at Hemming with a colourless face.  Her eyes were brave
enough, but the pitiful expression of her mouth touched him with a
sudden painful remembrance.  During the hours of daylight the doctor
and Miss Tetson watched by the bedside, moving silently and speaking
in whispers in the darkened room.

The doctor was an Englishman somewhat beyond middle age, with a past
well buried.  In the streets and on the trail his manner was short
almost to rudeness.  He often spoke bitterly and lightly of those
things which most men love and respect.  In the sick-room, be it in
the rich man's villa or in the mud hut of the plantation labourer, he
spoke softly, and his hands were gentle as a woman's.

Hemming had been working with his little army all day, and, after
dining at the mess, he changed and relieved Miss Tetson and the
doctor.  Before leaving the room, the girl turned to him nervously.

"Did you see Valentine last night?" she asked.

Hemming told her that Hicks had come to his room for quinine.

"Good night, and please take good care of him," she said.

The Englishman screwed his eye-glass into place, and glared at her
uneasily.  "Hicks is a good sort," he said, "but he is not the kind
for this country.  Neither are you, Miss Tetson.  But it's nuts for
me,--this playing soldier at another man's expense."

He paused, and she waited, a little impatiently, for him to go on.
"What I wanted to say," he continued, "is that there is one thing
that goes harder with a man than yellow fever.  I--ah--have
experienced both.  Hicks is a decent chap," he concluded, lamely.

Miss Tetson smiled and held out her hand.

"If he should want me in the night, please call me.  I will not be
asleep," she said.

Hemming, for all his rolling, had gathered a good deal of moss in the
shape of handiness and out-of-the-way knowledge.  Twice during the
night he bathed the sick man; with ice and alcohol.  Many times he
lifted the burning head and held water to the hot lips.  Sometimes he
talked to him, very low, of the North and the blue sea, and thus
brought sleep back to the glowing eyes.  The windows were open and
the blinds up, and a white moon walked above the gardens.

Just before dawn, Hemming dozed for a few minutes in his chair.  He
was awakened by some movement, and, opening his eyes, beheld Miss
Tetson at the bedside.  Hicks was sleeping, with his tired face
turned toward the window.  The girl touched his forehead tenderly
with her lips.

Hemming closed his eyes again, and kept them so until he heard her
leave the room,--a few light footsteps and a soft trailing of skirts.
Then, in his turn, he bent above the sleeper.

"If this takes you off, old chap, perhaps it will be better," he said.

But in his inmost soul he did not believe this bitter distrust of
women that his own brain had built up for him out of memory and
weariness.




CHAPTER V.

CHANCE IN PERNAMBUCO

While Hicks tossed about in his fever dreams, and Hemming shook his
command into form, away on the coast, in the city of Pernambuco,
unusual things were shaping.  From the south, coastwise from Bahia,
came Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke.  This was chance, pure and simple,
for he had no idea of Hemming's whereabouts.  From New York, on the
mail-steamer, came a man called Cuddlehead, and took up his abode in
a narrow hotel near the waterfront.  He arrived in the city only an
hour behind O'Rourke.  He was artfully attired in yachting garb, and
had been king-passenger on the boat, where his English accent had
been greatly admired, and his predilection for card-playing had been
bountifully rewarded.  In fact, when he went ashore with his meagre
baggage, he left behind at least one mourning maiden heart and three
empty pockets.

O'Rourke, upon landing, had his box and three leather bags carried
across the square to the ship-chandler's.  He would look about before
engaging a room, and see if the place contained enough local colour
to pay for a stop-over.  He fell, straightway, into easy and polite
conversation with the owner of the store.  From the busy pavement and
dirty square outside arose odours that were not altogether foreign to
his cosmopolitan nose.  Three men greeted one another, and did
business in English and Portuguese, speaking of the cane crop, the
rate of exchange, the price of Newfoundland "fish," and of gales met
with at sea.  Bullock-carts creaked past in the aching sunlight, the
mild-eyed beasts staggering with lowered heads.  Soldiers in
uncomfortable uniforms lounged about.  Cripples exhibited their ugly
misfortunes, and beggars made noisy supplication.

O'Rourke decided that there was enough local colour to keep him, and,
turning from the open door, contemplated the interior of the
establishment.  The place was dim and cool, and at the far back of it
another door stood open, on a narrow cross-street.  Cases of liquor,
tobacco, tea, coffee, and condensed milk were piled high against the
wall.  Baskets of sweet potatoes and hens' eggs stood about.  Upon
shelves behind the counter samples of rope, canvas, and cotton cloth
were exhibited.  Highly coloured posters, advertising Scotch whiskey,
brightened the gloom.  The back part of the shop was furnished with a
bar and two long tables.  At one of the tables sat about a dozen men,
each with a glass before him, and all laughing, talking, swearing,
and yet keeping their eyes attentively fixed on one of their number,
who shook a dice-box.

O'Rourke, who had by this time made his name known to the
ship-chandler, was given a general introduction to the dice-throwers.
He called for a lime-squash, and took a seat at the table between a
dissipated-looking individual whom all addressed by the title of
"Major," and a master-mariner from the North.  There were several of
these shellback skippers at table, and O'Rourke spotted them easily
enough, though, to the uninitiated, they had nothing in common but
their weather-beaten faces.  Their manners were of various degrees,
running from the height of civility around to nothing at all.  There
was the first officer of a Liverpool "tramp" with his elbows on the
board, his gin-and-bitters slopped about, and his voice high in
argument.  Next him sat a mariner from one of the Fundy ports,
nodding and starting, and trying to bury in whiskey remembrance of
his damaged cargo and unseaworthy ship.  Nearer sat a Devonshire man
in the Newfoundland trade, drinking his sweetened claret with all the
graces of a curate, and talking with the polish and conviction of a
retired banker.  O'Rourke glanced up and down the table, and detected
one more sailor--a quiet young man clad in white duck, with "Royal
Naval Reserve" marked upon him for the knowing to see.  These four
men (each one so unlike the other three in clothes, appearance, and
behaviour) all wore the light of wide waters in their eyes, the peace
bred of long night-watches on their tanned brows, and the right to
command on chin and jaw.  O'Rourke felt his heart warm toward them,
for he, too, had kept vigil beside the ghostly mizzen, and read the
compass by the uncertain torch of the lightning.

The other occupants of the table were residents of the country--two
English planters, the major, a commission-merchant, a native cavalry
officer, and several operators of the South American Cable Company.
The major remarked upon the rotten state of the country to O'Rourke,
in a confidential whisper, as he shook the dice in the leather
cylinder.  O'Rourke replied, politely, that he wasn't an authority.

"But I am, sir," blustered the major.  "Dear heaven, man, I'd like to
know who has been American consul in this hole for the last seven
years, only to get chucked out last May by a low plebeian politician."

The speaker's eyes were fierce, though watery, and his face was red
as the sun through smoke.  He drained his glass, and glared at
O'Rourke.

"Couldn't say.  Never was here before," replied O'Rourke.  He counted
his neighbour's throw aloud, for the benefit of the table.

"Three aces, a six, and a five."

He was about to recover two of the dice from a shallow puddle on the
table, and replace them in the box, when he felt a hand on his arm.

"I was American consul," hissed the major, "and, by hell, I'm still
sober enough to count my own dice, and pick 'em up, too."

O'Rourke smiled, unruffled.  "You don't mean you are sober enough,
major--you mean you are not quite too drunk," he said.  The others
paused in their talk, and laughed.  The major opened his eyes a
trifle wider and dropped his under jaw.  He looked the young stranger
up and down.

"Well, I hope you are ashamed of yourself," he said, at last.

"I am sorry I was rude, sir," explained O'Rourke, "but I hate to be
grabbed by the arm that way.  I must have a nerve there that connects
with my temper."

A tipsy smile spread over the ex-consul's face.

"Shake hands, my boy," he cried.  They shook hands.  The others
craned their necks to see.

"You've come just in time to cheer me up, for I've been lonely since
Hemming went into the bush," exclaimed the major.

"Hemming!  Do you mean Herbert Hemming?" asked O'Rourke, eagerly.

"That's who I mean," replied the major, and pushed the dice-box
toward him.  O'Rourke made nothing better than a pair, and had to pay
for thirteen drinks.  If you crave a lime-squash of an afternoon, the
above method is not always the cheapest way of acquiring it.  As the
dice-box went the rounds again, and the attention of the company
returned to generalities, the newcomer asked more particulars of
Hemming's whereabouts.

"He started into the bush more than a week ago, to find some new kind
of adventure and study the interior, he said," explained the major,
"but my own opinion is that he went to see old Tetson in his place up
the Plado.  Sly boy, Hemming!  Whenever we spoke of that crazy
Tetson, and his daughter, and his money, he pretended not to take any
stock in them.  But I'll eat my hat--and it's the only one I have--if
he isn't there at this minute, flashing that precious gig-lamp of his
at the young lady."

O'Rourke had read stories about this eccentric millionaire in the
newspapers some years before.

"Hemming is safe, wherever he lands," he said.  "He's a woman-hater."

A look of half-whimsical disgust flashed across the old man's
perspiring face.  He leaned close to O'Rourke.

"Bah--you make me sick," he cried, "with your silly commonplaces.
Woman-hater--bah--any fool, any schoolboy can say that.  Call a man
an ice-riding pinapede, and you'll display the virtue of originality,
at least.  At first I suspected you of brains."

O'Rourke was embarrassed.  How could he explain that, in using the
term woman-hater, he had meant to suit his conversation to the
intellect of his hearer.  It was commonplace, without doubt, and
meant nothing at all.

"Do you think, Mr. O'Rourke," continued the other, "that simply
because I'm stranded in this hole, on my beam-ends (to use the
language of our worthy table-mates), that my brain is past being
offended?  You are wrong, then, my boy, just as sure as my name is
Farrington.  Hemming would never have called a man a woman-hater.
Why, here am I, sir, sitting as I have sat every day for years,
getting drunk, and with never a word to a woman, white or black, for
about as long as you have used a razor.  But I don't hate women---not
I.  I'd give my life, such as it is, any minute, for the first woman
who would look at me without curling her lip--that is, the first
well-bred white woman.  Ask Hemming what he thinks, and he will tell
you that, in spite of the men, women are still the finest creatures
God ever invented.  No doubt he seems indifferent now, but that's
because he has loved some girl very much, and has been hurt by her."

"You are right, major, and I gladly confess I used a dashed stupid
expression--so now, if you don't mind, please shut up about it,"
replied O'Rourke.  To his surprise Farrington smiled, nodded in a
knowing way, and lapsed into silence.

While one of the mariners was relating a fearsome experience of his
own on a wrecked schooner, Mr. Cuddlehead entered the place and
seated himself at the unoccupied table.  He sipped his peg, and
studied the men at the other table with shifting glances.  He thought
they looked easy, and a vastly satisfied expression came to his
unhealthy, old-young face.  Though well groomed and well clothed, Mr.
Cuddlehead's deportment suggested, however vaguely, a feeling on his
part of personal insecurity.  He glanced apprehensively whenever a
voice was raised high in argument.  He started in his chair when the
man who served the refreshments came unexpectedly to his table to
deposit a match-holder.

To O'Rourke, who had an eye for things beyond the dice, Mr.
Cuddlehead's face hinted at some strange ways of life, and
undesirable traits of character.  In the loose mouth he saw signs of
a once colossal impudence; in the bloated cheeks, dissipation and the
wrecking existence of one who feasts to-day and starves to-morrow; in
the eyes cruelty and cunning; in the chin and forehead a low sort of
courage.

Gradually the crowd at the long table thinned.  First of all the
cavalry officer arose, flicked imaginary dust off the front of his
baggy trousers, and jangled out into the reddening sunlight.  The
planters followed, after hearty farewells.  They had long rides ahead
of them to occupy the cool of the evening, and perhaps would not
leave their isolated bungalows again inside a fortnight.  Next the
operators announced their intentions of deserting the giddy scene.

"Come along, major, you and Joyce promised to feed with us to-night,"
said one of them, "and if your friend there, Mr. O'Rourke, will
overlook the informality of so sudden an invitation," he continued,
"we'll be delighted to have him, too."

"Great heavens, Darlington," exclaimed the major, "you are still as
long-winded as when you first came out," and, before O'Rourke could
accept the invitation for himself, he concluded, "of course O'Rourke
will honour you, my boy."

"Thank you, very much, it's awfully good of you chaps," stammered
O'Rourke, disconcerted by the major's offhand manner.

Darlington smiled reassuringly.  "Don't let this old cock rattle
you," he said, and patted Major Farrington affectionately on the
shoulder.

After dinner that night, in the palatial dining-room of the house
occupied by the staff of the South American Cable Company, O'Rourke
learned something of the major's past life.  It was a sad and
unedifying story.  The major had been trained at West Point, and led
his class in scholarship and drill, and had risen, with more than one
distinction, to the rank of major.  But all the while he had made his
fight against drink, as well as the usual handicaps in the game of
life.  He had married a woman with wealth and position superior to
his own, who had admired him for his soldierly qualities and fine
appearance, and who, later, had been the first to desert him.  Then
followed the foreign consular appointments, the bitter and
ever-increasing debaucheries, and at last the forced retirement from
his country's service.  Now he lived on a small allowance, sent him
weekly, by his family.  O'Rourke began to understand the old man's
fretful and disconcerting moods.

At a late hour the superintendent of the staff ushered O'Rourke to a
big, cool room on the second floor.

"Make this your home," he said, "and we'll let you in on the same
footing as ourselves.  Hemming occupied this room last.  There is his
bed; there is his hammock; and, by Jove, there are his slippers.  You
can have your traps brought up in the morning."

Thus did Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke become an inmate of an imposing
mansion in Pernambuco, with moderate charges to pay and good company
to enliven his hours.




CHAPTER VI.

CUDDLEHEAD DECIDES ON AN ADVENTURE

Toward noon of a stifling day, the major and Mr. Cuddlehead met in
the square by the waterfront.  Cuddlehead greeted the major affably.
As the major was very thirsty he returned the salutation.  A glance
through the door at his elbow displayed, to Mr. Cuddlehead's
uncertain eyes, a number of round tables with chairs about them.  He
took out his watch and examined it.

"Eleven-thirty--I always take something at half-past eleven.  I hope
you will join me," he said.

"I seldom drink before lunch," replied Farrington, "but as this is an
exceptionally dry day--"

They passed through the doorway and sat down at the nearest table.

"Now I will find out what is doing," thought Cuddlehead, and gave his
order.  But for a long time the major's tongue refused to be
loosened.  He sipped his liquor, and watched his companion with eyes
of unfriendly suspicion.  Cuddlehead, in the meantime, exhibited an
excellent temper, put a few casual questions, and chatted about small
things of general interest.

Now Cuddlehead had heard, from the captain of the mail-boat,
something about a wealthy American with a bee in his bonnet and a
pretty daughter, somewhere within reach of Pernambuco.  The story had
grown upon him, and a great idea had taken shape in his scheming
mind.  Why shouldn't he, if all that people said and wrote about
American girls was true?  By gad, he'd make a shot at it.  He'd show
them how to spend their money in more interesting places than the
back of nowhere.  As soon as the major began to look more friendly,
under the influence of the crude whiskey, he produced his
cigar-case,--a fat black leather affair, with an engraved silver
plate on the front of it,--and offered the old man an excellent weed
of Havana.  The major took it, glancing keenly, but swiftly, at the
initials on the case as he did so.  "P. doesn't stand for
Cuddlehead," he thought, but said nothing.

"Tell me something about the man who owns a whole country, somewhere
back here, in the bush," urged Cuddlehead, lightly.  The old man's
muddled wits awoke and jerked a warning.  Here was some scum of
Heaven knows where, wanting to interfere in a better man's business.

"What's that, my boy?" he asked, looking stupidly interested.

"Oh, it is of no importance.  It just struck me as being a bit out of
the way," replied the other.

"What?" inquired the major.

"The place Mr. Tetson hangs out," laughed Cuddlehead.

"It's all that, my boy," replied Farrington, gleefully; then he
stared, open-mouthed.  "At least," he added, "it may be, but what the
hell are you gabbing about?"

"Sorry.  Had no idea it was a secret," retorted the younger man.

The major's potations flooded to his head.  His face took on a darker
shade of crimson.  His hands twitched on the table.

"Secrets!  You d--n little sneak," he roared, staggering up and
overturning his chair.  The expression of insolence faded from
Cuddlehead's face.  He dashed out of the place without paying for the
bottle of whiskey.  On the pavement he paused, long enough to compose
his features and straighten his necktie.  Then he went to the
ship-chandler and gathered a wealth of information concerning Harris
William Tetson.  But he heard no mention of Hemming being in the
country, which was, perhaps, just as well.  He was certainly a sneak,
as more than the major had called him, but he was not altogether a
duffer.  He could look after himself to a certain extent.  He decided
to keep Pernambuco until later, and go now for bigger game.  He made
his plans speedily, fearing another meeting with the major, and early
next morning started along the coast, inside the reef, as a passenger
aboard a native _barcassa_.  The voyage to the mouth of the river
Plado would take the better part of a day.  He would wait in the
little village for Mr. Tetson's steam-launch, which made weekly runs
to the coast for mail and supplies.




CHAPTER VII.

HEMMING LEARNS SOMETHING ABOUT HIS ARMY

In Pernamba, up the Plado, life had taken on a brighter aspect for at
least two of the inhabitants.  Marion Tetson was thankful beyond the
power of speech, because the fever had left Hicks.  True, it had left
him thin and weak as a baby, but his very helplessness made him
dearer in her eyes.  That one who had been so big and strong should
ask her to lift his head whenever he wanted a drink, and should have
his pillow turned for him without displaying a sign of rebellion,
stabbed her to the innermost soul with wonder and pity.  Hicks was
happy because she was near him all day, her eyes telling what her
lips were longing to say, if his dared to question.  Then he could
half remember some things which were as part of his
dreaming--wonderful, magic things with all the glamour of dreams,
free from the weariness of the fever.  But he said nothing of these
just then to Marion, though she read his thoughts like a book while
he lay there very quiet, smiling a little, his gaze following her
every movement.  To Hemming also he wore his heart on his sleeve.  Of
this fact he was blissfully ignorant.  Mrs. Tetson often came to his
room and gave him motherly advice about not talking too much and not
thinking too hard.  Hicks felt no desire to talk, but as for
thinking, Lord, she might as well have told him to stop breathing.
He thought more in ten minutes now than he had before in any three
hours.  They were comforting thoughts, though, for the most part, and
Marion knew that they did him more good than harm.

Hemming kept up a show of interest in the army.  He lectured the
officers and drilled the men, and dined almost every night at the
mess, which he had remodelled on the English plan.  But most of the
time he kept his eye on the President.  It was a job he did not care
about,--this prying into another man's business,--but somehow he
could not put it by him, things were so obviously out of order.  He
kept his monocle polished, his ears open, and his mouth shut.  He was
always willing to listen to the President's dreary conversations.
The life lacked excitement for one who had run the gauntlet of a
hundred vital dangers.  He had given up all special correspondence,
but did a good deal of fiction when the mood was on him.  The longing
to return to a more active existence grew stronger every day, but his
friendship for the Tetsons and for Hicks kept him at his post.

Hemming's morning coffee was always served in his room at six
o'clock.  That left him about two and a half hours of the cool of the
day in which to work.  Breakfast, with its queer dishes of hot meats,
and claret, tea, and coffee to drink, came on about nine.  Breakfast
was a family affair, and after it every one retired for a nap.
Hemming usually drank his coffee before he dressed, but one morning
Smith found him pacing the room, booted and spurred, and attired in
stained breeches and a faded tunic.  There were cigar ashes on the
floor beside the bed.  A volume of Stevenson's "Men and Books" lay
open on the pillow.

"Fill my flask," he said, "and let the President know that I may not
be back until evening."

"Very good, sir," replied the valet.  "Will I order your horse, sir?"

While the man was out of the room Hemming pulled open a drawer in his
desk, in search of revolver cartridges.  The contents of the drawer
were in a shocking jumble.  In his despatch-box at large among his
papers he found half a dozen cartridges, a cigarette from the army
and navy stores at home, and a small bow of black ribbon.  He picked
up the bow, kissed it lightly, and instead of restoring it to the box
put it in his pocket.

"She liked me well enough in those days--or else she did
some--ah--remarkable acting," he said.

Turning on his heel he found Smith in the doorway.

Your horse is ready, sir," said the man.  Hemming blushed, and, to
hide his confusion, told Smith to go to the devil.  He rode away with
an unloaded revolver in his holster.

"It must be a pretty rotten country," soliloquized the valet, "when a
single-eye-glassed, right-about-turn,
warranted-not-to-shrink-wear-or-tear gent like that gets buggy before
breakfast."

The commander-in-chief rode from the gardens by the same gate at
which he had entered for the first time only a month before.  He did
not return the salute of a corporal in the door of the guard-house.
He did not notice the little brown soldier at the gate, who stood at
attention upon his approach, and presented arms as he passed--which
was, perhaps, just as well, for a freshly lighted cigarette smoked on
the ground at the man's feet.  He turned his horse's head northward.
On both sides of the street arose the straight brown boles of the
royal palms, and high above the morning wind sang in the stiff
foliage.  At the end of the street he turned into the path by which
he had first entered the town.  The country folk urged their horses
into the bush that he might pass, and he rode by unheeding.  In their
simple minds they wondered at this, for the fame of his alert
perception and flashing eye-glass had gone far and near.  Of his own
accord the white stallion came to a standstill before a hut.  Hemming
looked up, his reverie broken, and his thoughts returned to Pernamba.

A woman came to the narrow doorway and greeted him with reverence.
He recognized in her the woman who had first welcomed him to the
country.  He dismounted and held out his hand.

"How is the little fellow?" he asked.  At that the tears sprang into
her eyes, and Hemming saw that her face was drawn with sorrow.  He
followed her into the dim interior of the hut.  The boy lay in a
corner, upon an untidy bed, and above him stood the English doctor.
The two men shook hands.

"I can clear him of the fever," said the doctor, "but what for?  It's
easier to die of fever than of starvation."

"Starvation," exclaimed Hemming, "why starvation?"

"The señor does not know," said the woman.  "It is not in his kind
heart to ruin the poor, and bring sorrow to the humble."

"But," said the doctor, looking at Hemming, "to Englishmen of our
class, a nigger is a nigger, say what you please, and the
ends-of-the-earth is a place to make money and London is the place to
spend it."

The soldier's face whitened beneath the tan.

"Don't judge me by your own standards, Scott, simply because you were
born a gentleman," he said.

"Oh," laughed the doctor, "to me money would be of no use, even in
London.  I find the ends-of-the-earth a place to hide my head."

"But what of starvation and ruin?" asked the other.

"I thought," replied the doctor, "that you were in command of the
army.  Ask those mud-faced soldiers of yours why this woman has
nothing to feed to her child."

"I _will_ ask them," said the commander-in-chief, and he ripped out
an oath that did Scott's heart good to hear.  He turned to the woman.

"I am sorry for this," he said, "and will see that all that was taken
from you is safely returned.  The President and I knew nothing about
it."  He drew a wad of notes from his pocket and handed it to her.
Then he looked at the doctor.

"If I did not like you, Scott, and respect you," he continued, "I'd
punch your head for thinking this of me.  But you had both the grace
and courage to tell me what you thought."

"I don't think it now," said Scott, "and I don't want my head
punched, either, for my flesh heals very slowly.  But if I ever feel
in need of a thrashing, old man, I'll call on you.  No doubt it would
be painful, but there'd be no element of disgrace connected with it."

Hemming blushed, for compliments always put him out of the game.  The
woman suddenly stepped closer, and, snatching his hand to her face,
kissed it twice before he could pull it away.  He retreated to the
door, and the doctor laughed.  Safe in the saddle, he called to the
doctor.

"My dear chap," he said, "you have inspired me to a confession.  I,
too, have soured on London."

"Let me advise you to try your luck again.  A girl is sometimes put
in a false light by circumstances---the greed of parents, for
instance," replied Scott.

Hemming stared, unable to conceal his amazement.

"I have not always lived in Pernamba," laughed Scott, "I have dined
more than once at your mess.  Fact is, I was at one time surgeon in
the Sixty-Second."

"You are a dry one, certainly," said Hemming.

"It is unkind of you to remind me of it when the nearest bottle of
soda is at least three miles away, and very likely warm at that,"
retorted the doctor.  Hemming leaned forward in his saddle and
grasped his hand.

"I will not take your advice," he said, "but it was kind of you to
give it.  Forgive me for mentioning it, Scott, but you are a dashed
good sort."

"Man," cried the other, "didn't I tell you that I am hiding my head?"
He slapped the white stallion smartly on the rump, and Hemming went
up the trail at a canter.




CHAPTER VIII.

CAPTAIN SANTOSA VISITS HIS SUPERIOR OFFICER

Hemming got back to the village in time to change and dine with the
family.  The President's mind was otherwhere than at the table.  He
would look about the room, staring at the shadows beyond the
candle-light, as if seeking something.  He pushed the claret past
him, and ordered rye whiskey.  His kind face showed lines unknown to
it a month before.  Mrs. Tetson watched him anxiously.  Marion and
the commander-in-chief talked together like well-tried comrades,
laughing sometimes, but for the most part serious.  Marion was paler
than of old, but none the less beautiful for that.  Her eyes were
brighter, with a light that seemed to burn far back in them, steady
and tender.  Her lips were ever on the verge of smiling.  Hemming
told her all of his interview with the peasant woman, and part of his
interview with Scott.

"There will be trouble soon," he said.

She begged him not to stir it up until Valentine was well enough to
have a finger in it.

"You may not think him very clever," she said, "but even you will
admit that he shoots straight, and has courage."

"I will admit anything in his favour," replied Hemming, "but as for
his shooting, why, thank Heaven, I have never tested it."

"Wasn't he very rude to you one night?" she asked.

He laughed quietly.  "The circumstances warranted it, but he was rude
to the wrong person, don't you think?"

"No, indeed," she cried, "for no matter how minus a quantity your
guilt, or how full of fault I had been, it would never have done for
him to threaten me with a--"  She paused.

"Service revolver?" said Hemming, "and one of my own at that."

"Fever is a terrible thing," she said, gazing at the red heart of the
claret.

"My dear sister," said the Englishman, "a man would gladly suffer
more to win less."

They smiled frankly into one another's eyes.

"Then you do not think too badly of me?" she asked.

"I think everything that is jolly--of both of you," he replied.

"I like your friendship," she said, "for, though you seem such a good
companion, I do not believe you give it lightly."

After the coffee and an aimless talk with Tetson, Hemming looked in
at Hicks and found him drinking chicken broth as if he liked it.  The
invalid was strong enough to manage the spoon himself, but Marion
held the bowl.  Hemming went to his own room, turned on the light
above his desk, and began to write.  He worked steadily until ten
o'clock.  Then he walked up and down the room for awhile, rolling and
smoking cigarettes.  The old ambition had him in its clutches.
Pernamba, with its heat, its dulness, its love and hate, had faded
away.  Now he played a bigger game--a game for the world rather than
for half a battalion of little brown soldiers.  A knock sounded on
his door, and, before he could answer it, Captain Santosa, glorious
in his white and gold, stepped into the room.  The sight of the
Brazilian brought his dreams to the dust.  "Damn," he said, under his
breath.

Then he waved his subordinate to a seat.

The captain's manner was as courteous as ever, his smile as urbane,
his eyes as unfathomable.  But his dusky cheek showed an unusual
pallor, and as he sat down he groaned.  Hemming eyed him sharply; men
like Santosa do not groan unless they are wounded--maybe in their
pride, by a friend's word, maybe in their vitals by an enemy's knife.
There was no sign of blood on the spotless uniform.

"A drink?" queried Hemming, turning toward the bell.

"Not now," said the captain, "but afterward, if you then offer it to
me."  He swallowed hard, looked down at his polished boots, aloft at
the ceiling, and presently at his superior officer's staring
eye-glass.  From this he seemed to gather courage.

"I have disturbed you at your rest, at your private work," he said,
with a motion of the hand toward the untidy desk, "but my need is
great.  I must choose between disloyalty to my brother officers, and
disloyalty to you and the President.  I have chosen, sir, and I now
resign my commission.  I will no longer ride and drink and eat with
robbers and liars.  It is not work for a gentleman."  He paused and
smiled pathetically.  "I will go away.  There is nothing else for my
father's son to do."

"I heard something of this--no longer ago than to-day," said Hemming.

Santosa lit a cigar and puffed for awhile in silence.

"I winked at it too long," he said, at last, "for I was dreaming of
other things.  So that I kept my own hands clean I did not care.
Then you came, and I watched you.  I saw that duty was the great
thing, after all--even for a soldier.  And I saw that even a
gentleman might earn his pay decently."

Hemming smiled, and polished his eye-glass on the lining of his
dinner-jacket.

"Thank you, old chap.  You have a queer way of putting it, but I
catch the idea," he said.

The captain bowed.  "I will go away, but not very far, for I would
like to be near, to help you in any trouble.  Our dear friend
Valentine, whom I love as a brother, is not yet strong.  The
President, whom I honour, is not a fighter, I think.  The ladies
should go to the coast."

"You are right," said Hemming, "but do not leave us for a day or two.
I will consider your resignation.  Now for a drink."

He rang the bell, and then pulled a chair close to Santosa.  When
Smith had gone from the room, leaving the decanter and soda-water
behind him, the two soldiers touched glasses and drank.  They were
silent.  The Brazilian felt better now, and the Englishman was
thinking too hard to talk.  A gust of wind banged the wooden shutters
at the windows.  It was followed by a flash of lightning.  Then came
the rain, pounding and splashing on the roof, and hammering the palms
in the garden.

"That's sudden," said Hemming.

"Things happen suddenly in this country," replied Santosa.

Hemming leaned back and crossed his legs.

"Have you seen Hicks since the fever bowled him?" he asked.

"No," replied the captain, "no, I have not seen him, but he is my
friend and I wish him well.  Is it not through our friends, Hemming,
that we come by our griefs?  It has seemed so to me."

Hemming glanced at him quickly, but said nothing.  Santosa was a
gentleman, and might safely be allowed to make confessions.

"When I first came here," continued the captain, "I was poor, and the
Brazilian army owed me a whole year's back pay.  I had spent much on
clothes and on horses, trying hard to live like my father's son.  Mr.
Tetson offered me better pay, and a gayer uniform.  I was willing to
play at soldiering, for I saw that some gain might be made from it,
outside the pay.  My brother officers saw this also, and we talked of
it often.  Then Miss Tetson came to Pernamba.  I rode out with her to
show her the country.  I told her of my father, and of how, when they
carried him in from the field, they found that the Order of Bolivar
had been driven edgewise through his tunic and into his breast by the
blow of a bullet.  And when I saw the look on her face, my pride
grew, but changed in some way, and it seemed to me that the son of
that man should leave thieving and the crushing of the poor to men of
less distinction.

"Sometimes my heart was bitter within me, and my fingers itched for
the feel of Valentine's throat.  But I hope I was always polite,
Hemming."  He got lightly to his feet, and held out his hand.

"Young ladies talk so in convent-schools," he said.

"Not at all," replied Hemming, gravely, "and I can assure you that
your attitude toward all concerned has left nothing to be desired.  I
will look you up at your quarters after breakfast."

Captain Santosa went through the gardens, humming a Spanish
love-song.  He turned near a fountain and looked up at a lighted
window.  His white uniform gleamed in the scented dusk.  He kissed
his finger-tips to the window.  "The end of that dream," he said,
lightly, and his eyes were as unfathomable as ever.  The water
dripped heavily on to the gold of his uniform.

Hemming went in search of the President, and found him in the
billiard-room, idly knocking the balls about with a rasping cue.

"Have a game, like a good chap," urged the great man.

The commander-in-chief shook his head.

"Not now, sir.  I came to tell you something about the army," he
replied.  He was shocked at Tetson's sudden pallor.  The yellow cigar
was dropped from nerveless fingers and smeared a white trail of ash
across the green cloth.

"What do they want?" asked Tetson, in a husky voice.

"Oh, they take whatever they want," replied Hemming; "the taxes that
are due you, and something besides from the unprotected."  Then he
retailed the case of the poor woman.  When he had finished Tetson did
not speak immediately.  His benevolent face wore an expression that
cut Hemming to the heart.

"I must think it over," he said, wearily, "I must think it over."




CHAPTER IX.

MR. CUDDLEHEAD ARRIVES

Mr. Cuddlehead's trip, though free from serious accident, had been
extremely trying.  The _barcassa_ had cramped his legs, and the smell
of the native cooking, in so confined a space, had unsettled his
stomach.  He had been compelled to wait three days in the
uninteresting village at the mouth of the Plado, unable to hurry the
leisurely crew of the launch.  But at last the undesirable journey
came to an end, and with a sigh of relief he issued from beneath the
smoke-begrimed awning, and stretched his legs on the little wharf at
Pernamba.  He looked at the deserted warehouses along the
river-front, and a foreboding of disaster chilled him.  The afternoon
lay close and bright in the unhealthy valley, and the very
peacefulness of the scene awoke a phantom of fear in his heart.  What
if the President were a man of the world after all, with a knowledge
of men and the signs on their faces?  Why, then, good-bye to all hope
of the family circle.

A black boy accosted Cuddlehead, awaking him from his depressing
surmises.  The nigger gabbled in the language of the country.  Then
he pointed at the traveller's bag.

"Take it, by all means," said Cuddlehead.

There is one hostelry in Pernamba, on a side street behind the
military stables.  It is small and not very clean.  To this place the
boy led Cuddlehead, and at the door demanded five hundred reis--the
equivalent of sixpence.  Cuddlehead doubled the sum, for after all he
had done very well of late, and a favourable impression is a good
thing to make in a new stamping-ground, even on a nigger.  The
proprietor of the inn bowed him to the only habitable guest-chamber.
Here he bathed, as well as he could with two small jugs of water and
his shaving-soap, and then changed into a suit of clean white linen.
With a cigarette between his lips and a light rattan in his hand,
Cuddlehead was himself again.  He swaggered into the narrow street
and started in search of the President's villa.  He passed a group of
soldiers puffing their cigarettes in a doorway, who stared after him
with interest and some misgivings.  "Was the place to be invaded by
Englishmen?" they wondered.  He saw a brown girl of attractive
appearance, rolling cigars beside an open window.  He entered the
humble habitation, and, after examining the samples of leaf, in sign
language ordered a hundred cigars.  Then he embraced the girl, and
was promptly slapped across the face and pushed out of the shop.

"What airs these d--n niggers put on," he muttered, "but maybe I was
a bit indiscreet."

Here, already, was the hand of Hemming against him, though he did not
know it; for Hemming, also, had bought cigars from the girl, and had
treated her as he treated all women, thereby establishing her
self-respect above the attentions of men with eyes like Cuddlehead's.

Cuddlehead found the gates open to the President's grounds without
much trouble, and was halted by the sentry.  He produced his
card-case.  The sentry whistled.  The corporal issued from the
guard-house, with his tunic open and his belt dangling.

Just then Captain Santosa entered from the street, with, in the
metaphorical phrase of a certain whist-playing poet, "a smile on his
face, and a club in his hand."  He swore at the corporal, who
retreated to the guard-house, fumbling at his buttons.  He bowed to
Cuddlehead, and glanced at the card.

"You would like to see the President?" he said.  "Then I will escort
you to the door."  He caught up his sword and hooked it short to his
belt, wheeled like a drill-sergeant, and fitted his stride to
Cuddlehead's.

Mr. Tetson received the visitor in his airy office.  He seemed
disturbed in mind, wondering, perhaps, if this were a dun from some
wholesale establishment on the coast.  He had been working on his
books all the morning, and had caught a glimpse of ruin, like a great
shadow, across the tidy pages.  But he managed to welcome Cuddlehead
heartily enough.

"You must stay to dinner, sir,--pot-luck,--very informal, you know,"
he said, hospitably.  He leaned against the desk and passed his hand
across his forehead.  He could not keep his mind from working back to
the sheets of ruled paper.

"Ten thousand," he pondered, "ten thousand for April alone, and
nothing to put against it.  The army wanting its pay, and robbing me
of all I have.  Gregory's coal bill as long as my leg.  Sugar gone to
the devil!"  He sighed, mopped his face, and looked at Cuddlehead,
who all the while had been observing him with furtive, inquiring
eyes.  He offered a yellow cigar, and lit one himself.

"Excuse me a moment," he said.  "I have something to see to.  Here
are some English papers.  I'll be back immediately, Mr. Cuddlehead,
and then maybe we can have a game of billiards."

He went hurriedly from the room.

"You are a foolish old party," remarked Cuddlehead to the closed
door, "and, no doubt, you'll be all the easier for that.  Hope your
daughter is a better looker, that's all."

He tossed the offensive cigar into the garden, and seated himself in
the chair by the desk.  His courage was growing.

At the hall door Mr. Tetson met Hemming entering.  The commander was
booted and spurred.

"Are you busy?" inquired the President.  "There's a visitor in here."

The Englishman glared.

"Yes, sir, I am busy," he replied.  "I've caught my command in seven
of their thieving tricks, and have ridden thirty miles to do it.
I've told the whole regiment what I think of them, and now I must
dine at the mess, to see that they don't concoct any schemes to
murder me."

"Haven't you time for a game of billiards with Mr. Cuddlehead?" asked
Mr. Tetson.

"No, sir, I have not," replied Hemming, crisply, and tramped away to
change his clothes.  "The old ass," he muttered, under his breath.

Dinner that night was a dull affair.  Hemming and Hicks were both
absent from the table.  Cuddlehead had excellent manners, and all the
outward signs of social grace, but a warning was marked on his face.
The President tried to be entertaining, but the terror of an
impending disturbance, and even of ruin, hung over him.  Mrs. Tetson,
guessing somewhat of her husband's troubles, sat pale and fearful.
Marion was polite, with a politeness that, after two or three essays
of gallantry on Cuddlehead's part, left him inwardly squirming.
After dinner Miss Tetson described the visitor to Hicks, mentioning
the horrible mouth, the shifting eyes, and the odious attentions.

"He must be pretty bad, for you to talk about him," said Valentine,
in wonder.

"Oh, if I had never seen men like you and Mr. Hemming," she answered,
"he would not seem so utterly ridiculous."

Hicks was in a chair by the window, and Marion was perched on the arm
of it.  His eyes were desperate.  Hers were bright and daring.  Her
mouth was tremulous.

"I can understand your admiration for Hemming," he said.  "He is the
best chap on earth, barring only you."

Marion smiled.

"I wonder," he continued, presently, "I wonder if--that was all a
dream?"

"What?" she asked.

"I wish I could see you," he said.  "I believe you are laughing at me
up there."

"I am laughing," she replied, "but I don't know why exactly."

"At my stupidity, perhaps."

"You are certainly very stupid."

"No, I'm a coward."

"What are you afraid of?"

He leaned back as far as he could, trying to see her face.

"I am afraid you pity me--and don't love me," he said.

He breathed hard after that, as if he had run a mile.

"I am not modest enough to pity you," she said, softly, "though no
doubt you are deserving of pity."

"Marion," he whispered, "for God's sake, don't.  I'm too blind with
anxiety to read riddles.  Tell me straight--do you love me?  Have I
even the ghost of a chance?"

"Do you believe in ghosts?" asked she, with trembling laughter, and,
bending forward, with a hand on either of his thin shoulders, she
pressed her cheek to his.

While love had his innings in the sick-room, below curiosity led the
feet of Mr. Cuddlehead toward the officers' quarters on the outskirts
of the town.  The night was fine, and not oppressively close.  A
breeze from the hills made liquid stir in the higher foliage.
Cuddlehead felt in his blood a hint of something unusual, as he took
his way through the President's wide gardens, and out to the road.
No sentinel paced, sabre at shoulder, before the little guard-house.
The troopers stood in groups along the street, smoking and talking.
The smoke of their pungent cigarettes drifted on the air, and the
murmur of their voices rang with a low note of menace.  Unmolested,
Cuddlehead reached the long white building where the officers of this
inconsiderable army lodged and messed.  Through the open windows
glowed a subdued light from the shaded lamps above the table.  The
compassing verandas were but partially illuminated by the glow from
within, and silent men stood here and there in the shadows,
motionless and expectant.  At Cuddlehead's approach, the nearer ones
hesitated for a moment, and then drew away.

"There is something rotten," quoted Cuddlehead, under his breath, and
looked cautiously in.  For a moment the array of faultless, gaudy
mess-jackets startled him.  In the sight of an apparently civilized
military mess there was, to him, a suggestion of danger.  Recovering
his composure, he looked again.  The faces up and down the table were
dark, and, for the most part, sullen.  At the head of the board, with
his face toward the onlooker's place of vantage, sat Hemming.  His
shoulders were squared.  His eye-glass gleamed in the lamplight.
Cuddlehead stared at the commander-in-chief with a fearful,
spellbound gaze.  His hands clutched at the low window-sill.  His
breath seemed to hang in his windpipe.  At last he straightened
himself, moistened his craven lips with his tongue, and went
stealthily away.  Safe in his own room in the quiet inn, he took a
shrewd nip of raw brandy.

"What the devil," he asked himself, "brought that righteous,
immaculate fool to this God-forsaken place?"

Two things were uppermost in his memory--a caning once given to a
cad, and a shilling once tossed to a beggar.




CHAPTER X.

THE FIRST SHOT

Mr. Cuddlehead did not go far afield during the day following his
glimpse of the officers' dinner-table.  Instead, he kept to his room
until evening, or at most took a furtive turn or two on the cobbles
before the inn door.  After his lonely and not very palatable dinner
was over, he set out cautiously for the President's villa.  He wanted
to have a talk with Miss Tetson alone.  She, no doubt, could explain
matters to him, so that he might be able to decide on a course of
action.  He walked slowly, keeping always a vigilant look-out for the
trim, dauntless figure of Herbert Hemming.  At the great gateway the
brown boy on sentry-go saluted, and let him pass without question.
In return he treated the fellow to his blandest smile and a _milreis_
note.  He did not keep long to the drive, but turned off into a
narrow path as soon as he felt that the soldier had ceased watching
him.  He took his time, traversing winding paths between low tropical
shrubs and yellow-stemmed bamboo, but always drawing nearer to the
quiet mansion.  Presently his ear caught a welcome sound,--the soft,
frivolous strumming of a banjo.  He was aware that Hemming was not
musical; in fact, he remembered that his rendering of "Father
O'Flynn" had once been mistaken for the national anthem.

Cuddlehead found Miss Tetson on a stone seat, near her favourite
fountain.  At sight of him, she stopped her idle playing, and
answered his salutation with the coldest of bows.  Her lover's kisses
still burned on her lips, and words of his impulsive wooing still
rang sweetly in her ears.  Even the little brown crane, that stood
there watching the sparkling water with eyes like yellow jewels,
reminded her of a certain evening when she had been unkind to
Valentine Hicks.  The hour was not for Cuddlehead.

Undisturbed by the coolness of his reception, Mr. Cuddlehead seated
himself at the far end of the bench, and began to talk.  He described
his journey from Pernambuco to Pernamba, and with so fine a wit that
Marion smiled.  He told little anecdotes of his past, very clever,
and very vague as to dates and scenes.  The girl almost forgot the
sinister aspect of his face in the charm of his conversation, and
when he mentioned Hemming, in terms of warmest respect, she confided
to him something of his trouble with the army.

"Perhaps I can be of some use; one Englishman should be good for ten
of those niggers," he said.  He lifted the banjo from the seat, and
made it dance and sing through the newest Southern melody.  His touch
was both dainty and brilliant.  He replaced the instrument on the
seat between them.  He saw that the girl was more favourably
impressed with him than she had been.  For a little while they kept
silence, and her thoughts returned to Valentine Hicks.  Suddenly they
heard Hemming's voice, pitched low and sharp, in anger.  He was
hidden from them by shrubs of tangled growth.

"I have given my orders," he said.  "Do you understand?"

The thick voice of the colonel made reply in spluttering oaths.

"No more of that," said Hemming, fiercely.

Marion heard the crunch of his heels on the path as he wheeled.
Cuddlehead held his breath, the better to hear, and a quotation about
a house divided against itself came imperfectly to his mind.

The heavy footsteps of the native officer were heard retreating.
Presently Hemming rounded the hedge of roses, and stood by the
fountain.  By the faint starlight the watchers saw that he was
smiling.  He lit a cigarette with deliberate care, and dropped the
match into the shallow basin of the fountain.  He lit another match
and looked at his watch.  He had the air of one keeping a tryst.
Santosa came out of the shadows beyond, booted and spurred.  The two
men shook hands, and whispered together.  Their backs were turned
square upon the occupants of the bench.  Then Hemming produced a long
packet of papers and gave them to Santosa.

"Mr. Tetson has signed them all," he said, "and the major will see to
the business part of it.  Impress the importance of the matter upon
him, and then hurry back, for I'm afraid these idiots intend making
this unpleasant for us.  And now, old man, good luck and God bless
you.  It is a fine night for a ride."

"A beautiful night," replied Santosa, "and on such a night I must
either make love to my friends or trouble for my enemies."

He turned on his heel and clanked away.

All this time Marion had sat as one spellbound.  Now she looked
toward the other end of the stone seat.  Cuddlehead had gone.  She
called to Hemming.  He started at the sound of her voice.  "You
here?" he said.

"Yes, and so was Mr. Cuddlehead a moment ago.  But he sneaked off,
the little cad."

"Did he see the papers?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm sure he did," she replied.

"You had better run into the house," he said.  "I'll look for the
spy."

Marion hastened indoors, and told Hicks all she knew about the
trouble.  The young man looked deeply concerned.

"I wish Hemming had come to us a year ago," he exclaimed.

"Could he have helped it?" she asked.

"I believe he would have opened our eyes, dear, before things got
into such an awful mess," replied her lover.

"But surely we are not in any danger," she urged.  "Surely Mr.
Hemming and father can quiet them."

"Our lives are safe enough, but the little fools may break some
windows.  You see, dear, the President and I have not watched them as
we should.  We have let them rob us right and left, and now, when
Hemming tries to spoil their game, and force them to divvy up, they
evidently want to bully us.  It's in their blood, you know,--this
revolution business."  Having thus unbosomed himself, Hicks leaned
weakly back in his chair.

"Dearest," he said, presently, "will you bring me my Winchester--it's
in the boot closet--and that bag of cartridges on my writing-table."

The girl brought them, and Hicks oiled the breech of the rifle.

A few minutes later the President and Mrs. Tetson entered the
secretary's sitting-room.  They found that gentleman sorting out
heaps of cartridges, while their daughter sat near him busily
scrubbing sections of a Colt's revolver with a toothbrush.  The
President's face displayed shame and consternation.

"God help us! we are ruined," he said, looking from one to another
with bloodshot eyes.

He produced a yellow cigar from a shabby case, and seated himself
close to the window.  Suddenly he stood up and looked out.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Hemming," came the faint reply.

A rifle cracked, and the bullet splintered the slats of the shutter.
The President retired into the room and turned off the lights.

"Hemming was right.  They mean to force me," he exclaimed.

Hicks tottered to the window, rifle in hand.  The sounds of a violent
scuffle arose from the flowerbeds.  Hicks could just make out a
rolling, twisting mass below.

"Hold your fire," gasped a voice which he recognized as Hemming's.
Presently the mass ceased its uneasy movements, and divided itself
into two equal parts, one of which continued to lie among the crushed
flowers, while the other staggered along the wall of the house and
entered the dining-room by a window.  The President, carrying a
revolver awkwardly, hurried down-stairs.  Presently he returned, he
and Smith leading Hemming between them.  Hemming was limp, and his
pale face was streaked with dust and sweat.  Blood dripped from his
left sleeve.  His monocle was gone.

"Mrs. Tetson, if you'll tie up my arm,--I'll show you how,--I'll be
fit as a fiddle," he said, and sank into a chair.

"Gun?" queried Hicks, who knelt by the window, with his rifle on the
sill.

"Knife," replied Hemming.

Marion cut away the sleeve of his jacket.  "Surely Mr. Cuddlehead did
not carry a knife," she said.

"I don't think so; I jumped on the wrong man.  Heard some one
crawling through the bushes, and thought I had him.  One of my own
troopers--he stuck me in the muscles,--bleeds a bit, that's all," he
replied.

"There's not a sound in the garden now," said Hicks.

"Who fired the shot?" asked Tetson.

"A corporal," said Hemming.  "He was behind me when you spoke.  I
didn't know--any one--was near.  He'll never--fire another--shot."
Then the commander-in-chief fainted on Valentine's bed, and Smith
brought him around with cold water and brandy.  Then Smith stole away
from the villa toward the barracks.  It was close upon dawn when he
returned.

"They think they'll kidnap the President and the ladies, and take
them away up-country and hold them for a ransom; it is the stranger's
idea," he informed them.

The President turned a shade paler, and glanced apprehensively at his
wife and daughter.  Hicks swore.  Hemming sat up and slid his feet to
the floor.

"They are fools,--and Cuddlehead must be mad," he exclaimed.  Tetson
went over to his wife.

"Can you forgive me, dear?" he asked, huskily.  For answer she kissed
him.

The villa was left undisturbed all the following day.  Again darkness
came.  The gardens were deserted.  Smith had crawled around the house
four times without hearing a sound or attracting a shot.  The
troopers were crowded together on and about the verandas of the
officers' quarters, listening to the heated discussions of their
superiors, Cuddlehead was with the officers, he and the colonel
pouring their whiskey from the same decanter.  A dark and silent
procession moved from the President's villa down to the river, where
the little steamer lay with her boilers hot.  Mr. Tetson carried a
small bag filled with sovereigns and a basket of food.  Marion and
Mrs. Tetson and two maids followed with wraps, baskets, and firearms.
Smith scouted ahead.  Hemming and Hicks walked feebly behind, armed
and alert.  The things were passed smartly aboard.  The mooring-line
was cleared.  Hicks steadied himself by Marion's arm.

"We will soon follow you," he said.  "Then you will think better of
me than if I went now."

They were very close together, and the others were all busy crawling
under the dirty awnings, or saying good-bye.

"I am poor as Job's turkey," he said.

"And my father is ruined," she replied.

"When will you marry me?" he asked.

"As soon as you come for me,--in Pernambuco, or New York,
or--anywhere," she answered.  Then she kissed him, and at the touch
of her tear-wet face his heart leaped as if it would leave its place
in his side to follow her.

The little steamer swung into the current, and drifted awhile without
sound.  Presently a red crown of sparks sprang from the stack, and
like a thing alive it darted away down the sullen stream.  Hemming,
Hicks, and Smith turned silently and stole back to the deserted
house.  During their short absence, all the native servants had run
away.

Smith, who seemed devoid of fear, buried the dead trooper in the
flower-bed upon which he had fallen.  Doctor Scott joined the
garrison toward morning, and was both relieved and surprised to find
that the Tetsons had decamped safely.

"They are not dangerous now, except to property," he said.  "They may
do a little accidental shooting, of course, for the colonel is very
drunk, and down on you, Hemming, for spoiling his profitable game.
That new chap seems to be quite off his head.  Never heard such fool
talk in all my life as he is spouting."

"Did Santosa get away?" asked Hemming.

"Two men went after him, and only one came back, and he is in the
hospital," replied the doctor.

"Who looked after him?" inquired Hemming.

"I stitched him up before I came away," replied Scott, casually.




CHAPTER XI.

THE COLONEL'S ULTIMATUM

The little garrison breakfasted before sunrise.  They had been busily
occupied all night, securing doors and windows against any sudden
attack.  Smith made the secretary a huge bowl of beef tea, much to
that warlike invalid's disgust.

"See here, Smith," he said, "if I can fight, I can eat."

"Miss Tetson's orders, sir," replied the man, gravely.

The doctor laughed boisterously, and Hicks blushed.  While Hemming
and Scott devoured boiled eggs, muffins; and coffee, with Smith
waiting on them with a revolver in his pocket, Hicks retired to
another room, out of sight of temptation.  The poor fellow felt that
seven eggs and a plate of muffins would be as nothing in his huge
emptiness.  He opened one of the upper front windows, and knelt by
the sill, rifle in hand.  His thoughts were gloomy.  The beef tea had
only sharpened his appetite and dampened his spirits.  Outside, the
dawn was quickly strengthening, filling the beautiful gardens with
magic, inviting light.  He thought of the little fountain in front of
the bench, and of the lonely crane.  Suddenly he heard the brisk
padding of hoofs on the drive, and the colonel, followed by a
trooper, rode up to the great steps.

With pardonable caution, Hicks protruded his head from the window,
and addressed the Brazilian politely.

The stout horseman saluted, and spoke thus, in what he fondly
considered to be English: "Señor, a good morning to you, my friend.
I here have a letter, humbly which I wish a delivery in the hands of
General Hemming."

He smiled up at the man in the window, evidently vastly pleased with
his speech.  It was not often that he attempted the language of these
aliens.

"If you will kindly request the gentleman with you to poke the letter
under the door, I shall be delighted to deliver it to the general,"
replied Hicks, with a wan grin.

The colonel blinked sleepily, for he had been up late, assisting at
the writing of the letter, and emptying bottles.  "Have no tremble,
señor," he said, "for see,--I am as a sheep, mild."

"I know nothing of sheep, colonel," replied Hicks, "and all is not
wool that looks greasy."  The soldiers below looked puzzled, and
Hicks felt sorry that they were his only audience.  Presently the
colonel spoke to his man in Portuguese, and passed him a long, white
envelope.  The little trooper advanced upon the doorway.

"Thank you, sir," cried Hicks, and bowed, as he turned from the
window.  But the colonel called him back.

"A moment, señor," he said; "I will inquire of the conditions of the
ladies, with most respectable regards."

"Thank you, they are very well," said Hicks, and hurried away.

When Hicks gave the letter to Hemming, that self-possessed gentleman
and the doctor were smoking, with their chairs pushed back, and Smith
was eating muffins with surprising rapidity.

"A letter to you?" queried Scott.  "Then they must know of Tetson's
escape."

"Possibly," said Hemming, and opened the paper.  At first he smiled,
as he read.  Then, of a sudden, he wrinkled his brows, stared, and
looked up.

"What is that stranger's name?" he asked, sharply.

"Cuddlehead, sir," replied Smith, promptly.

"I doubt it," retorted the other, "for I have reason enough to
remember this handwriting."

To explain the remark, he opened the sheet on the table, and pointed
to where a line had been crossed through and rewritten in a
chirography very different to that of the body of the manuscript.

"He seemed harmless enough, whoever he is, from what I heard of him,"
remarked Hicks.

"He's a sneaking cad," said Hemming, hotly, "and has more devil in
him than you could find in the whole of that rotten battalion put
together.  His real name is Penthouse,--and, by gad, no wonder he
kept out of my sight!"

"May we read the letter?" asked the doctor, calmly.

"Read away," said the commander-in-chief, and got out of his chair to
pace the room.

The style of the document disclosed its mongrel extraction.  It ran
as follows:


"TO THE DISTINGUISHED SEÑOR HERBERT HEMMING, LATE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
OF THE ARMY OF PERNAMBA.

"DEAR SIR:--We, the undersigned officers of the Army of Pernamba
(seeing in you the real head of the presidential household), do
hereby request you to consider the following petitions.  First--We
desire the sum of ten thousand dollars, due us and our men, in back
pay, as per signed agreement with Mr. Tetson.  Second--We desire an
apology from your distinguished and august self, due us for insulting
words spoken to every officer and man of this army.  Should the above
petitions not be granted within twenty-four hours, we shall proceed,
without further parley, to force the money from Mr. Tetson and the
apology from you."


At the foot of this ridiculous but disconcerting epistle, stood the
names of all the native officers, except, of course, Captain Santosa.

The morning passed without disturbance.  The brown soldiers moved
about the fast-shut house, smoking endlessly, and talking to one
another.  The afternoon proved as unexciting as the morning, and
Smith began to long for a fight.  But Hemming would not let him even
take pot-shots at the men in the grounds.  By the doctor's orders,
the secretary's diet was advanced to soft-boiled eggs.  By good luck
a store of these were in the house, all more or less fresh.

The colonel took up his position before the villa bright and early on
the morning of the 20th of May.  It was quite evident to Hemming, who
watched him from an upper window, that he had been drinking heavily.
Hemming was the first to speak.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I am sure you know what I want, señor," he replied, in his own
language.

"Mr. Tetson and I have decided not to consider your so-called
petitions," said Hemming, quietly.  "We would prove ourselves cowards
should we do so.  Mr. Tetson owes you nothing,--in fact, the debt is
very much the other way; and I shall never ask your pardon for having
spoken the truth."

The colonel was furious.

"Consider the safety of the ladies," he shouted.

Scott, who stood behind Hemming, chuckled at that.  "What wily,
open-eyed chaps they are," he said.  "I wonder if they have missed
the steamer yet?"

Hemming leaned from the window.  "We can look after the ladies, thank
you," he sneered, "and, by the way, tell your precious English
friend, who helped you write that charming letter, that if I get my
hands on him, he'll suffer more than he did the other time.  Hurry
along now."

Hemming had recovered his monocle, and before its baleful glare the
colonel was silent and confused.  Just then Cuddlehead thumped into
view, clinging to the neck of Hemming's own white stallion.  He was
in a far worse state than the colonel even, and swayed in the saddle.

"Good morning, Captain Hemming," he cried, and waved his hand.

The men in the room were startled by the expression that crossed
their friend's face.  The mouth hardened.  The eyes narrowed.  A deep
flush burned in his thin cheeks.  He paid no heed to the stranger's
salutation.

"Pepper," he said, softly.

The stallion looked up.

"What is that pitiful object on your neck?  That nasty cad?"

Pepper hung his clever little head.

His master leaned far out of the window, and his eyes met those of
the little stallion.

"Pepper," he said, "jump."

Pepper jumped.  Cuddlehead slid over his tail, and for a full minute
remained seated in the dust.  The Brazilian colonel reeled in his
saddle with choking laughter.

"Good old horse, good Pepper," called Hemming, gently.

The stallion cantered away, riderless.

The object of the colonel's uncomfortable mirth got painfully to his
feet.  His face was purple with the fury that raged within him.  He
cast discretion to the winds, and, drawing a revolver, emptied it at
the smoking-room window.  He looked under the cloud of dirty smoke,
and saw Hemming's face bent toward him, set and horrible.

"Go away," said a voice that rang like metal, "or I will kill you
where you stand.  You have crossed my trail once too often,
Penthouse, and, by God! this will be the last time.  But now you may
go away, you poor fool."

Scott twitched once or twice, where he lay on the smoking-room floor,
with his head on Smith's knee.

But he was dead, sure enough, with a hole in his neck and another in
his heart.

News of the doctor's death soon reached the army, and the colonel's
eyes were partially opened to his foolishness.  He returned to his
quarters, and tried to drown his misgivings in drink.  Soon he was as
reckless and crazy as ever.  It was not a game for a sober man to
play with any chance of success.  Penthouse, for it was really he,
cursed his luck when he heard of his deed, but not so much in disgust
at having killed a harmless stranger as in having missed Hemming.
Then he steadied his nerves with a glass of brandy, and encouraged
the army to fresh efforts.

In the afternoon, Hemming opened the front door, and stared at the
men on the veranda.  His left arm was in a sling.  The troopers
straightened up at sight of him, and one even went so far as to toss
away his cigarette.  The slim lieutenant, with the weakness for golf,
bowed low.

"While you are waiting for that money," said Hemming, "will you be
kind enough to ask some of your men to dig a grave over there?"  He
pointed with his hand.  The lieutenant gave the order.  Then he
turned to Hemming.

"We regret the doctor's death," he said, "but,--ah--well--the
fortunes of war."

"You give this lawlessness rather a dignified name," replied the
Englishman.

A blush was all the Brazilian's answer.

"Do you want to kill us all, or is it only the money you are after?"
asked Hemming.

The lieutenant looked both ashamed and sulky.  He was handsome in a
weak sort of way, with a baby face and a thread of black moustache.
"We want not to kill," he began, in stilted English, then in his own
tongue he continued, "We swore long ago to stick together and hold to
our plans,--all except Captain Santosa.  We are poor, and one way of
making money seemed as good as another.  We have our pride and our
honour,--we officers.  You insulted our colonel.  You have called us
robbers.  Now we will humble your arrogance,--and get our pay."

Hemming translated slowly, often having to hark back to a word and
feel around for its meaning.  The troopers, who had caught something
of the conversation, awaited the commander-in-chief's reply in
expectant attitudes.

"You have your pride," he said at last; "then, for God's sake, take
it away!  It reminds me of a cur with a rotten bone.  And that
murderer you have with you, surely you are proud of him.  Humble my
arrogance if you can.  It will stand a lot of that sort of thing."

He looked out to where three men were breaking the sod for Scott's
grave.

"How many of you has Doctor Scott nursed back to worthless lives?" he
asked.  The men turned their faces toward the gravediggers.




CHAPTER XII.

O'ROURKE TO THE RESCUE

Penthouse (still known to the army as Señor Cuddlehead) sat in the
colonel's bedroom in an unenviable frame of mind.  He had been a fool
to show himself to Hemming.  He had been a fool to put any faith in
these niggers.  Why, the little cowards were afraid to break into the
house,--afraid to face five white men and a couple of women.  And now
that Hemming had seen him again, and again in a decidedly
unfavourable light, what mercy could he expect if Hemming ever got
out of the President's villa?  Whatever he could do must be done
quickly.  He looked at the colonel, who lay in drunken half-slumber
on the bed.

"You don't seem to be carrying out our plans," he said.

The Brazilian groaned, and muttered something in his own tongue,
which, fortunately, the other could not translate.  "We must carry
off the women to-night.  Our chances of getting what we want lessen
every hour.  If help comes from the coast, then what will happen?
Half a dozen men could run your dirty army out of the country."  With
every unheeded word, Penthouse's anger grew.  The colonel sprawled
there, murmuring that he felt very ill.  Penthouse jumped up and
shook him violently.

"Wake up, you drunken hog!" he shouted; "wake up, and get to work."

The colonel opened his eyes.

"The ladies--they are gone.  They went--long ago."

He closed his eyes again.

"You fool!" cried Penthouse, trembling with rage and disappointment,
"you fool, didn't I tell you to put a guard on the boat, and to
surround the house?"

"The guard went--to Pedro's--to buy wine.  I did not hear till
to-day.  I was angry," replied the Brazilian, in a faint and broken
voice.

"To buy wine," echoed the white man, in a tragic cry.  Failure
grinned at him again.  Even in battle and murder he could not
succeed.  He almost found it in him to regret the vagrant, hungry
days on the London streets, when he went up and down among familiar
faces, tattered and disguised.  He was at home there, at least, and
knew the tricks of the place.  But here, hunted by Hemming for a
murderer, penniless, and among strangers,--Lord, one would be better
dead.

"Hemming must never get away from that house," he whispered to
himself.

The colonel snorted and choked in his heavy sleep.  For a few minutes
the broken Englishman looked at him intently.  Then he walked over to
a small table by the window.  "There is still liquor that I don't
have to pay for," he said, and lifted the bottle.

Through the President's gardens and the streets of the little town,
the troopers sauntered and smoked, awaiting further orders from their
colonel for the undoing of the passive enemy.

"The colonel and Señor Cuddlehead are closeted together," said a
subaltern to a sergeant, "so before dark we shall have our money."

"But the ladies have gone," replied the sergeant.  "They went away in
the President's steamer while the guard was shaking dice at Pedro's."

"How do you know that?" argued the officer.  "No one saw them go.  Of
course they keep away from the windows."

"The General Hemming would see that we got our money, if the ladies
were in any danger," said the other, conclusively.  But the subaltern
shook his head.

"You don't know these fools of Englishmen as well as I do," he said.
"They would rather have their own grandmothers shot than pay out any
money."

"But," retorted the sergeant, with a knowing look, "it is not the
general's money we want, but the President's.  He would force the old
man to pay, if the ladies were in peril.  No, the women have gone
with the steamer, I am sure."

"Englishmen are stubborn brutes," replied the officer, unconvinced,
"and besides, my friend, this Hemming believes that with his own
right arm he is able to defend the house against us.  Also, my
friend, why should he give us Tetson's money until we force him to?
It may all be his some day."

The besieged wondered why more shooting was not done.  What fun could
the little men find in a smokeless revolution?  Did they still cling
to the hope of receiving back pay?  Did they still believe the family
to be in the villa?  Hemming, seated by the window, with his rifle
across his knees, wondered when they would begin to humble his
arrogance.  Valentine Hicks, eating quinine and prowling from room to
room, and window to window, with his Winchester under his arm, lived
over and over again his parting with Marion.  Smith, armed like a
pirate, and itching for a fight, was happier than he had ever been.
He had a heavy strain of the bulldog in him, had this valet named
Smith, also a fine respect for gentlemen, and a love of their
companionship.

It was dark in the gardens.  Smith was downstairs in the
billiard-room, motionless and wide awake.  Hemming and Hicks were
smoking, one on each side of the upper hall window, which overlooked
the front steps, the driveway, and the great gates.

"The poor fellows will be sadly disappointed when they get in and
find the Tetsons and the money gone," remarked Hemming, calmly,
"though their stupidity in thinking them still here beats me."

"There are some things of value in the house," replied Hicks.

"Oh, yes; they might melt the silver," suggested Hemming, "but the
furniture would bother them.  Of course they will tear up the place,
and pot us, and try to get revenge that way."

"Yes," replied Hicks, "but I have a little stone about me."  He
opened his linen tunic, and unfastened a narrow cartridge-belt.  "I
wear it next my skin," he said, "and it galls me a bit sometimes."
He drew a brass shell from one of the loops and with his penknife
extracted a cork and a wad of cotton wool.  Then he shook something
white and rough, but glowing dimly, into the palm of Hemming's hand.
He laughed softly.

"The bridegroom's gift to the bride," he said,--"if the bridegroom
gets to the church."

Hemming gazed at it in silence.

"Cut and polished, what would it be worth?" asked its owner.  His
voice was low and eager.  He placed a trembling hand on his friend's
knee.

"I have seen diamonds in the rough before," replied Hemming, "but
never one as large as this.  Brazilian stones vary a good deal in
quality.  It may stand for a fortune, or perhaps for nothing more
than a respectable cottage, with stables, a paddock, and an orchard,
and maybe a shooting in Scotland."

"That would do for us," said Hicks, grinning like a schoolboy.  "Old
Tetson could manage the orchard, and Mrs. Tetson could see that he
didn't get his feet wet."  For a few moments he seemed to be
following this dream of bucolic bliss.

Then he continued: "I bought it in Pernambuco last December from a
drunken sailor, a cook or something like that, who had run away from
a wind-jammer.  He didn't think much of it.  It had been given him by
an old woman,--at least, so he said, but more likely he stole it.  I
paid fifteen _milreis_ for it,--fifteen _milreis_, with the exchange
at ninepence."

"Put it away," said Hemming, "and keep that belt next your hide, no
matter how much it galls."

Hicks replaced the stone in the empty shell, and the shell in his
belt.

"And she thinks I haven't a cent," he whispered.  "Isn't she a brick?"

The Englishman leaned back, out of range of the open window, and
relit his cigar.  Suddenly Hicks bent forward, listening.

"Did you hear that?" he said.

But Hemming had heard no unusual sound, only the footsteps of their
guards, and the noise of men singing at the barracks.

"It's the first time I have heard an old 'Sam Peabody' in Brazil,"
said the American.

"Who?" said Hemming, wondering if his friend's temperature had gone
up again.

"It's a bird, some sort of sparrow we have in the North," replied
Hicks.  He left the hall quietly, and hung out of a window in his own
room.  Presently, from the shrubbery below him, came the familiar
notes again.  He wet his lips with his tongue, and whistled the clear
call himself.  He was answered immediately.  He peered down into the
dim garden.  The only light was that of the stars.  He could see
nothing.  No leaf stirred in the shrubbery, and there was neither
sight nor sound of the enemy on that side of the house.

"If you don't intend to let us in," said a quiet voice, "you might
pass out a couple of drinks."

"Whiskey and soda for me," said the voice of Captain Santosa.

Hicks ran down-stairs, and Hemming followed him.  They unbarred a
window, and Smith stood ready with his rifle at port.  In crawled
O'Rourke and Santosa, very wet as to clothing, but very dry inside.

"The Campbells have arrived," said O'Rourke, brushing mud from his
leggings.  Hemming, for a moment, was dumbfounded at this unexpected
appearance.

"God bless you, Bertram," he said at last, and they shook hands
warmly.

"I thought, a few days ago, that it was chance that brought me to
Brazil," said O'Rourke, "but really, little fellow, it must have been
your guardian angel.  What a chap you are for getting into silly
messes.  There seems to be a row whenever you arrive."

"This row is not Hemming's fault," protested Hicks.  O'Rourke and
Hemming laughed happily, for both felt that, together, they could
pull out of the worst scrape ever invented.

"This gentleman would come," said Santosa, "and at a pace that nearly
wore me to the bone."

Just then Smith held a tray toward the late arrivals.

"We left McPhey organizing a relief expedition to come by land,"
O'Rourke informed them, after quenching his thirst, "and the major,
after doing his business, will bring a party up by boat,--a company
or two of government troops."

"Where did you leave the horses?" asked Hemming.

"Up the trail a little way, with a dusky admirer of yours," replied
O'Rourke.

The besieged returned to the upper hall.  Hicks gave a clear though
somewhat lengthy account of the rebellion.  Santosa told them of his
ride to Pernambuco and O'Rourke gave such news as he could of the
outside world.  Hemming, with his eyes on the dark blue square of the
window, tried to formulate a plan by which five men might protect
themselves and the property against five hundred a day or two longer.
He knew that, if the colonel really intended violence, the crisis
must soon come.

Santosa kicked off his boots, and went to sleep on the floor.  Hicks,
seated with his rifle across his knees, also slipped away to the land
of Nod.

"If you have no objections," remarked O'Rourke, "I will take a bath.
Hope the enemy won't make any hostile move while I'm splashing."

Hemming lit another cigar, and continued his watch by the open
window.  His arm pained him a good deal, so it was not hard to keep
awake.  He heard the guards tramping about, and now and then a few
words of conversation, or a snatch of laughter.  He heard music and
shouting in the distance, and sometimes the faint and hurried clatter
of hoofs.  All the windows in the town seemed alight.  A cool wind
stole across the palms.  His thoughts left the foolish, drunken men
without, and the adventurers within, and journeyed, with the wind,
far beyond the black palms and the little city.  The report of a
rifle brought him to his feet with a jump.  Hicks also was out of his
chair.  Santosa was pulling on his boots.  They hurried down-stairs
followed by O'Rourke in a bath-towel.

"If it's a fight," said O'Rourke, "I'll dry myself and join you.  If
it's just skirmishing, I'll go back to my tub."

They found Smith at his post in the billiard-room.

"What is the trouble?" asked Hemming.

"Family quarrel, I believe, sir," replied the valet.  "Two people
have been talking English for quite awhile, just a little way off
that window.  Then some one fired a shot, and they dusted.  Think it
was one of the guards, sir, who fired.  Drunk, I suppose."

"What were they talking about?" asked Hemming.

"Well, sir, I couldn't catch much of it," replied Smith, "but there
was something said about Mr. Tetson's steamer, the _Alligator_, and
about the firemen and engineers being prisoners.  From what I could
gather, she was captured about half a mile down-stream to-night on
her way up.  One of the men said that he had got a job on her,
because he had some important business to attend to up here."

"The devil!" exclaimed Hicks.  "I bet they had a letter for me."




CHAPTER XIII.

THE UNEXPECTED SAILOR

Morning came, and with it the colonel, on Hemming's white stallion.

"I see," said he, in Portuguese, "that Captain Santosa has returned."

Hemming nodded.  The colonel pressed a tremulous hand to a flushed
forehead.

"Damn it," he cried, "I would not have done so.  This place is the
devil.  The ice factory has shut down, and my drink has been warm for
two days."

"Very interesting," replied the Englishman, "but if you have nothing
more important to tell me, you will excuse me if I return to my bed."

The colonel raised his hand.

"One moment," said he.

Then he ordered his men out of ear-shot.  He rolled a cigarette, and
lit it with unseemly deliberation.

"I have been remarkably polite and friendly," he said, "but now I
have your steamer, and the crew in prison, and unless, my dear
fellow, we can agree--"  He stopped, and removed his hat, the better
to rub his brow.  Hemming yawned.

"The army," continued the Brazilian, "is in a dangerous mood.  Unless
you give me five thousand _milreis_ to-night,--only five thousand
_milreis_,--I fear that I can restrain my brave soldiers no longer.
But say nothing of it to Señor Cuddlehead."

"Give me time to shave," said Hemming, "and then--"

"And then?" asked the colonel.

"Why, and then," repeated Hemming, "tell the little beasts not to be
restrained any longer.  As for the money--you may go to the devil for
that."

The colonel sighed, and mopped his neck with his wilted handkerchief.

"It is too warm to fight," he said.

"You will find it so," retorted the Englishman.

The colonel looked up helplessly.

"My army," he sighed, "how can I restrain it?  I hate to fight, and
my head aches.  But my army must have some money."

"I don't see my way to help you," said Hemming.

"The revolution is a failure unless you surrender and pay," cried the
colonel.  "Don't you understand, my dear Hemming?  I do not like
bloodshed, but--well, you have ruined our gentler plan."

"You might carry away the table silver," replied Hemming, "but there
is no money.  That has all gone to the coast.  No doubt the house and
furniture, and even the forks and spoons, belong by now to the
Brazilian government.  It would be foolish of you to damage
government property for the sake of a few pounds.  It would mean
trouble, my friend."

The colonel sagged in his saddle like a bag of meal.

"I cannot argue," he said, listlessly.  "It is too hot to talk.  My
head aches--the devil take it.  You should not have sent the money."

"A touch of sun," suggested Hemming.

The fat Brazilian looked at the blue sky through bloodshot,
half-closed eyes.

"The sun," he said, "why, yes, the sun.  Damn the sun."

He swayed for a moment, and then slid in a heap to the ground.  His
men had been watching him, and now two of them ran forward and
carried the yielding, flabby body to the nearest fountain.

"Sun and whiskey," commented Hemming.  Then he returned to his
bedroom and commenced to shave.

By this time the little garrison was astir.  Hicks, with a sandwich
in one hand and his rifle in the other, opened the shutters of one of
the lower windows and looked out.  Not ten feet away stood a man in a
blue cotton shirt, and dirty canvas trousers.  The blotchy, grinning
face and bowed legs struck him with an unpleasant sense of
familiarity.

"Hello, mister," said the stranger.  "I'd like to 'ave a word wid one
of you gents."

"Which one?" asked Hicks.

"There you 'ave me," replied the man.  "Ye see, I was drunk an' it
were a dark night.  Don't know as I'd know 'im widout puttin' a few
questions."  He took a couple of steps toward the open window.  Hicks
put the remaining portion of the sandwich into his mouth, and shifted
the rifle.

"Ease off that thar gun a p'int or two," cried the sailor.

Hicks had been taught, while young, not to talk with his mouth full.
So he made no answer.

"I ain't looking fer no trouble," said the seaman.  "All I want is
ter come aboard an' 'ave a quiet jaw wid you and yer mates, afore
this blasted old craft 'awls down 'er colours."

"What about?" asked Hicks.

"That thar dimund, skipper," replied the man, with an evil grin.

Hicks changed colour.  O'Rourke stuck his head out of the window.  He
glared at the man in the blue shirt for several seconds.

"Belay that talk," he said, "and stop up the slack of it neat and
shipshape."

The man of the sea rolled his eyes in pained astonishment.

"So it was you, Mr. O'Rourke," he sneered.  "Now that's a gentleman's
trick for you."

"Yes, it was I kicked you down the hatch, if that is what you are
mentioning," replied O'Rourke, "and I think you know enough of me to
obey my orders on the jump.  I've eaten enough of your slush-fried
grub to kill a whole ship's crew, you thieving sea-cook.  I know you
for too big a coward to step out on to the foot-rope, but brave
enough to jab a marlinspike between a mate's ribs.  So clear out of
this."

The seaman shuffled his feet and grinned.

"Not so quick," he retorted; "'and over that dimund an' I'll go,
Mister O'Rourke."

"Diamond, you longshore gallows-bird, I don't know what you are
talking about, but I'll hand over something that'll make you hop, in
a minute," cried O'Rourke, in a fury.

Hicks threw his Winchester to his shoulder.  "Come right in," he
said, "or I'll blow the third button of your dirty shirt, counting
from the top, right through your chest."

The seaman pulled a hideous face, and spat into the dust.

"Guess I'll accept your kind invite," he said.  "It's real civil of
gents like you to treat a poor sailorman like this."  But he did not
move.

O'Rourke eyed him with a new interest, and Hicks squinted along the
black barrel.

"Don't trouble about that knife.  We will lend you one if we keep you
to lunch," said O'Rourke.

The fellow's face widened in a sickly smile as he entered the
billiard-room by way of the open window.  After relieving him of an
amazingly sharp sheath-knife, they tied his hands and feet and locked
him safe in an empty room.

"You see, O'Rourke, I am the man he is after; I have the diamond he
talks about," explained Hicks.

O'Rourke whistled softly, and smiled inquiringly at the big
fever-thinned secretary.

"Take it from him?" he queried.

"I bought it from him," replied Hicks, "and it's on me now."

"Hold on to it, then, old chap," said O'Rourke, "and don't gab.  He
hates me, anyway, so he may just as well keep on thinking I have the
stone.  He was cook aboard a barquentine in which I made a voyage
last year.  I was a passenger,--the skipper's friend,--and when the
skipper was sick I had to interview the cook once or twice."

The colonel died that evening, at a quarter past six, of too much rum
and whiskey and not enough medical treatment.  His soldiers had done
their best to save his life.  Three of them, with the best
intentions, held him upside down in a fountain for a good fifteen
minutes, at the very beginning of his illness.  Then they had carried
him to his own quarters, and watched him expire.

The Señor Cuddlehead now took command, for the officers were in a
funk.  Through an interpreter he lectured and encouraged the men.  He
assured them that, should Hemming escape from the house alive, they
would all swing for it, sooner or later; and that should they capture
and bear away the other inmates, every man would find himself rich.
What matter if the ladies had escaped, he said--surely the friends of
Mr. Hicks would gladly pay a great ransom, should they succeed in
carrying him away to the hills.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE ATTACK

When news of the colonel's death reached Hemming, he sighed with
relief.

"That ends it," he said.  "The old man was a fool, but he held them
together."

"What about that Penthouse-Cuddlehead chap?  He seems to be taking an
interest in it," said Hicks.

"He is sneak enough for anything, but he is also a coward," replied
Hemming.

"This is a poor sort of revolution," said O'Rourke.  "I have had more
excitement waiting for my mail at the window of a country
post-office.  A Sunday-school treat beats it hands down.  Davis could
invent a better one in his sleep."

"Please don't talk like an ass, old chap," said Hemming.  He found
the revolution quite exciting enough.

"I shall go and look at my prisoner--he may be in a better humour
than you," remarked O'Rourke, pensively.

Hicks followed him to the door of the locked room.

"These duffers don't want to fight.  They never did, either.  It was
all a bluff of the colonel's," he said.

The other shook his head.

"Wait until we hear from Hemming's enemy.  I think he'll take a turn
before we get out of this," he replied.  "He has played poor old
Hemming some low tricks before now," he added, and gave Hicks a hint
of the trouble in Hemming's past.  Hicks passed on and descended to
the billiard-room, and O'Rourke paused at the door.  He turned the
key and stepped into the room.  He dodged before his eyes had warned
him of danger.  The huge fist landed on a point of his left shoulder,
and sent him spinning across the room.  He recovered himself in time
to partially evade the seaman's bull-like rush.  Staggered and hurt,
he closed with his antagonist, wondering dully if the fellow had
broken the cords, or had worked the knots loose.  It did not occur to
him to call for help.  The door had closed behind him.  The mariner's
huge arms seemed to force his very heart out of its place.  The
bowed, sturdy legs wrenched at his knees.  The hot, evil breath
burned against his neck.  For a moment the pain of it closed his
eyes.  He was bent nearly double, and pin-points of light flashed in
his brain.  Then he recovered his wits and his courage.  He twisted
himself so that his shoulder caught the sailor's chin.  This gave him
a chance to breathe, and eased the crushing weight upon his ribs.  It
was O'Rourke's belief that, in a rough and tumble fight, without
knives, and muscles being equal, the gentleman has always the
advantage of the plebeian.  So once again he settled himself to prove
it.  But this time the plebeian was unusually desperate.  He wanted a
diamond, and he hated the man his hands were upon.  All his superiors
were detestable to his uncouth soul.  He had feared O'Rourke before
this.  Now he felt no fear--only a mad desire to knock the breath out
of that well-kept body, and mark with blood the hard-set, scornful
face.  Then for the coast again, with the stone of fabulous price.
For a minute or two O'Rourke played a waiting game.  Twice, by his
quickness and length of leg, he avoided a bad throw.  His back and
neck had some close calls.  After discovering that he was in better
condition than his opponent, he began to force matters.  Within ten
minutes of his entrance, he knelt upon the sailor's bulky shoulders,
and with colourless lips muttered strange oaths.  Though his eyes
were bright, he was not nice to look at.

The original savage glared exultingly from that white face.  The
sailor lay still, with blood from lips and nose staining the floor, a
pitiful and ungainly figure.

Presently O'Rourke got to his feet and staggered from the room.
Smith caught him just in time to help him to a chair.  It had been a
big effort for a warm day.

Hicks nursed the mariner back to his miserable existence.  This
required only a few minutes, for brandy had an almost magic effect
upon this outcast of the sea.  He emptied one decanter, and, seeing
no chance of a second, made a dash for the open window, taking the
sill in a flying jump.  But the window was on the second floor.  When
Smith went out to look at the body there was no trace of it.

"I could have sworn," said Hicks, with a shudder, "that I heard his
neck break, but maybe it was just the bushes giving way."

The night was bright with stars.  The little garrison sat up and
smoked by the open windows.  On the lower floor, windows were
shuttered and barred, and doors were locked.  If this game of war
were worth playing at all, it was worth playing well.  Shortly before
midnight some one staggered up to the front of the house, carrying a
paper lantern at the end of a stick, and singing.  The guards jeered
him.  It was the sea-cook, drunk and bedraggled.  He stopped his song
in the middle of a line, and waved his lantern toward the window
above him.

"Come out," he bawled, "an' gimme that dimund.  Gesh you thought I
couldn't jump out er that windy, didn't yer?  Gesh yer'll be jumpin'
outa it yerself perty soon."

The lantern caught fire, and the gaudy paper globe went up in a
little burst of flame.  The man threw it from him, and lurched on to
the veranda.  A scattered volley broke, here and there, from the
garden.  A few bullets pinged into the woodwork of the windows.
Shouts of laughter went up from the clusters of trees and shrubs.
The sailor hammered the front door.  The guards sneaked away into the
friendly shadows.

"They are all drunk," said Hicks, "and they'll try to rush us, for
sure."

"Then the colonel's death was not an unmixed blessing," remarked
O'Rourke.

Hemming ordered Smith and Hicks to windows on the other side of the
house.

"Shall we shoot over their heads, or may we pump it right into them?"
asked Hicks.

"I leave it to your own discretion," replied Hemming.

Smith grinned.  He promised himself an easy interpretation of the
word.

Hemming took the window in the upper hall, overlooking the front
steps and the driveway, himself.

There was not a figure in sight.  But the glass of the window lay
broken on the floor, and the diamond-hunter kept up his drunken
disturbance on the veranda below.  The firing out of the shadows
continued, and drew nearer.  Hemming extinguished his cigar and sat
on the floor.  He enjoyed quite a novel sensation when a bullet sang
its way through the open window, like a great bee, and ripped into a
shelf full of books half-way down the hall.  He had never before been
under fire behind a window.  All about him he could hear the thumping
of bullets against the tiles of the outer walls.  Some one shouted in
English, ordering the drunken sailor to come away from the house.

"Yer want my dimund, that's wot yer want," he shouted back, "but yer
don't get so much ash a peep at it, see?"

Hemming heard and frowned, as he polished his eye-glass on his
sleeve.  Two shots sounded in quick succession from a room on the
left of the hall.  Hemming heard Santosa laugh, and O'Rourke
congratulate him.  The firing now seemed to centre mostly upon the
front of the villa.  Hemming, as yet, had not returned a shot.
Suddenly the white man, moved by a drunken whim, left his hammering
at the door, and pranced into the starlight.  The shooting of his
friends was everywhere.  Elevation had little attention from them,
and an unusually low ball found him out.  He did not spring forward
with uplifted hands; neither did he clutch at his breast and stagger
onward.  With an expression of pained astonishment on his face, and a
heave of his fat shoulders, he sank to his hips, and then rolled over
and lay still.  To Hemming, it looked as if his fat legs had simply
crumpled under him like paper.

A dozen men charged across the starlit driveway.  Hemming dropped two
of them.  The others ran up the steps and across the veranda, and
threw themselves against the door.  But they were small men, and the
door was a heavy one, and well bolted.  Hemming left the window, and
at the head of the stairs met O'Rourke.

"A brace and a half to me," said that gentleman, lightly.

The bitter smoke drifted from doorway to doorway through the dark.
Hemming got his sword from his bedroom, and he and O'Rourke waited at
the top of the stairs.

O'Rourke's heart was glad within him.  Shoulder to shoulder with a
man like Hemming, it would be a lovely fight.  The door could not
give in soon enough to suit him.  He had ten shots in his revolvers.
Then he could break a few heads with his clubbed rifle, surely, and,
after that, when they had him down, he could kick for awhile.  He did
not think of his parents in the North, his friends, his half-written
articles, nor his creditors.  But he was sorry that Miss Hudson would
never hear of his heroic finish.

"We have had some fun together, and I hope this will not be the
last," said Hemming.  They shook hands.  Then the door came in with a
rending, sidelong fall.  A bunch of men sprang across it and made for
the staircase, just discernible to them by the light from the doorway.

[Illustration: "THE DOOR CAME IN WITH A RENDING, SIDELONG FALL"]

"Fire into the brown," said Hemming, quietly.

The four revolvers jumped and spit--once--twice--and the wounded
slipped back against their comrades' legs.  More men entered the hall
below, and filed wildly into the darkness above and around.  Then
Hicks, Santosa, and Smith left their windows and pumped lead into the
housebreakers.  The noise was deafening.  The air was unfit to
breathe.  O'Rourke wondered at something hot and wet against his leg.
Hemming was angry because none would come within cutting distance.
Smith felt very sick, but did not mention the fact.  He knelt against
the bannisters, and fumbled with the hammer of his revolver, and the
blood from a great furrow in his neck ran down one of the polished
rounds that supported the carved hand-rail.  But it was dark, and he
could not see it.  But presently he dropped his revolver and felt the
blood with his fingers, and wondered, in a dim way, who it was dared
to make such a mess in Mr. Tetson's house.

The firing outside the house, which had died away for a minute,
increased suddenly, and cries of warning and consternation rang above
it.  More men came to the open doorway.  They were armed with rifles
instead of the short carbines of the Pernamba army.  They discharged
a volley or two into the backs of the scrambling soldiers on the
stairs.

"That ends the revolution," remarked Hemming, calmly, removing his
monocle from his eye.

"I think we could have done it without help," said Santosa.

The men on the stairs cried for mercy.

"Are you all safe, up there?" asked a voice from the door.

Smith clung to the rounds of the bannisters and closed his eyes, and
O'Rourke leaned against the wall with one knee drawn up.

"The same leg," he muttered, and twisted his face at the pain of it.




CHAPTER XV.

REST IN PERNAMBUCO

Miss Tetson and Mr. Valentine Hicks were married in the little
English church in Pernambuco.  The ex-President gave the bride away,
the ex-commander-in-chief supported the groom, and the major
supported the clergyman officiating.  Mrs. McPhey supplied the
wedding breakfast, and McPhey made all the speeches.  Then the
Tetsons and Hicks sailed away for New York, leaving Herbert Hemming
to nurse Mr. O'Rourke and Smith.

The invalids were housed in cool rooms in the McPhey mansion, on the
outskirts of the city, and they and Hemming were guests of honour for
as long as they would stay in the country.

O'Rourke's leg was in a bad way, but poor Smith's neck was in a
worse.  For the first week of his attendance the clever American
surgeon who had them both in charge felt anxious enough for the
valet's life.  But modern methods and unflagging care won the day,
and a wound that, in the time of the Crimean War, meant certain
death, left nothing but a sunken white scar.

A couple of months passed quietly.  Hemming worked at a series of
short stories, and learned the gaudy-coloured, easy-going city by
heart.  He received several letters from Hicks, and heard that the
diamond had been sold at a good price.  O'Rourke pulled on his
riding-boots again, and exercised McPhey's stable, night and morning.

Hemming's white stallion was once more an inmate of this stable.
Smith recovered his strength slowly, and spent his days in easeful
meditations and unnamed regrets for the good time of fighting and
comradeship.

One day, Captain Santosa (who, through the influence of McPhey and
the major, had procured a commission in the cavalry regiment
stationed in Pernambuco) brought news of Penthouse's death to
Hemming.  Penthouse had been found in a dying condition in the hut of
a poor woman, on the trail above Pernamba, by a party of government
troops.  He had been shot during the attack upon the President's
villa, and, crawling away from the fight, had been found by the
peasant woman, and tended by her through his weeks of suffering.  She
had explained to the officer in command that an Englishman had been
kind to her, and for his sake she had housed and nursed this other
Englishman.  Thus, through Hemming's kindness, had his enemy received
kindness.



END OF PART II.




PART THREE



CHAPTER I.

THE REAL GIRL

Hemming and O'Rourke, with Smith as valet-in-common, reached New York
in November, and shivered in their tropical underclothes.  The dismal
aspect of the great city, as viewed at nine o'clock of a drizzly
morning, daunted even the valet.  At sight of the wide, wet streets
and soaring office buildings, depressing memories of Dodder's death
came to Hemming.  The chill brought a twinge to O'Rourke's leg, and
the swinging, clanging cars and hustling crowds offended his sense of
the fitness of things.

In a four-wheeler they went direct to a bachelor apartment-house on
Washington Square, in which their friend, Mr. Valentine Hicks, had
engaged for them an airy suite of rooms.  As they passed under the
white archway, entering the old square, their moods lifted.

"I believe I'll feel all right, when I get into a woollen
undershirt," said O'Rourke.

Hemming soon settled down to his work.  He was more systematic about
it than O'Rourke, working several hours every morning at articles for
the magazines, and part of every evening at a novel.  O'Rourke, who
had many friends and acquaintances in and about Newspaper Row, spent
but little of his time at home, and did his work when he had to.
Both O'Rourke and Hemming were frequent visitors at another house on
the square, where the Hickses and Tetsons lived in comfort.
Hemming's novel was built up, chapter by chapter, and relentlessly
torn down, only to be rebuilt with much toil.  The general outline of
the story had come to him years before, one night while he was
playing poker in the chart-room of an ocean tramp.  He had written a
few pages next morning, behind the canvas dodgers of the bridge.
Then it had been pushed aside by the press of other work; but he had
returned to it now and then, in many parts of the world.  The
chapters done in Pernamba were the only ones that did not seem to
require rewriting.  By this time the original plot was almost
forgotten, and a more satisfactory one had developed.

One Thursday night, having finished the twentieth chapter as well as
he knew how, he changed his clothes and went over to call on Mrs.
Hicks.  It was her evening.  He went alone, for O'Rourke had dined
out, and had not returned.  About a dozen people were already there.
While he was talking to McFarland of the Gazette, he noticed a girl
talking to their hostess.  Just why she attracted him he could not
say for a moment.  Mrs. Hicks was more beautiful, and there were at
least two women in the room as tastefully gowned.  She looked girlish
beside her stately hostess.  But there was a jaunty, gallant air
about the carriage of her head and shoulders, which seemed to Hemming
particularly charming.  Her voice was deep, and her laughter was
unaffected as that of a boy.

"You too?" laughed McFarland.

"I never saw her before," said Hemming.

"Then let me tell you now," said the editor, "that it is no use.
Even your eye-glass could not awaken her from her romantic dream."

"Count me out," replied Hemming, dryly, "but tell me something about
it."

"All I know," said McFarland, "is that there are ten of us--eleven
counting the lucky unknown.  We ten used to hate one another, but now
we are as brothers in our common misery.  But tell me, is it true
that you are working on a novel?  I don't see what you want to go
messing with fiction for, when you can do stuff like that Turkish
book."

While Hemming and the journalist chatted aimlessly in Mrs. Hicks's
drawing-room, O'Rourke made history across the square.  He had
returned to his quarters only a few minutes after his friend had
left; and had scarcely got his pipe well lighted when Smith announced
"a gentleman to see Captain Hemming, very particularly."  O'Rourke
got to his feet and found the gentleman already at the sitting-room
door.  The caller was in evening clothes.  His ulster hung open, and
in his hand he carried an opera-hat.

"Hemming is out for the evening," said O'Rourke, "but perhaps I can
give him your message.  Come in, won't you?"

The stranger entered and sat down by the fire.  He glanced about the
walls of the room, and then fixed an intent, though inoffensive, gaze
on O'Rourke.

"I heard, only this morning, that Hemming was in town," he said.  "We
saw a good deal of each other, once, in Porto Rico."

"In Porto Rico?" exclaimed O'Rourke, knitting his brows.

"Yes.  Have you ever been there?"

"No, though I've sampled most of the islands.  But go on--I
interrupted you.  I beg your pardon."

"Don't speak of it.  I only came for the address of a friend of
Hemming's.  But perhaps you could tell me in what quarter of the
globe Mr. O'Rourke hangs out?  He's a literary chap, and maybe you
know him."

"Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I know him.  He is in town just now, at 206 Washington Square."

"Why, that must be very near here."

"It is," replied O'Rourke, with a strange light in his eyes and a
huskiness in his voice.

"Let me see," mused the other, "this is the Wellington, number two
hundred and--Lord, this is the place."

His dark face paled suddenly.

"My name is O'Rourke," remarked the big man with the pipe.

"And mine is Ellis," said the other.

They eyed each other squarely for several seconds.

"I have heard of you," said O'Rourke, in modulated tones.  But all
the while the blood was singing in his ears, and splashing wisps of
light crossed his eyes.

"And I of you," replied Ellis, quietly.  He had not yet regained his
colour.  O'Rourke, outwardly calm, turned in his chair and searched
among the papers on the table.  He found a leather cigar-case, opened
it, and extended it to his visitor.

"Try one of these.  We like them immensely," he said.

Now the red surged into Ellis's face, and he hesitated to receive the
cigar.

"Don't you know--how I have treated you?" he whispered.

"Please try a smoke--and then tell me why you came for my address.
The past is done with.  I am only afraid of the future now."

Ellis drew the long black weed from the extended case, and
deliberately prepared it for smoking.  When it was burning to his
satisfaction, he said:

"Do you know where the Hickses live?"

"Yes.  Hemming is there to-night."

"So is Miss Hudson," remarked Ellis.

O'Rourke jumped from his chair, and grasped the other by both hands.
Then he dashed into his bedroom and shouted for Smith.  When he was
half-dressed he remembered that he had forgotten to ask any
questions, or even to be excused, while he changed his clothes.  He
looked into the sitting-room.

"Forgive my bad manners, Mr. Ellis.  You see I'm in rather a rush,"
he said, gaily.

"Oh, certainly," exclaimed Ellis, starting up from a gloomy
contemplation of the fire.  He crossed over and smiled wanly at
O'Rourke.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I wish you'd keep quiet about my part
in--in this affair.  She would despise me, you know--and I couldn't
stand that."

"But I can tell her about to-night--about your kindness," suggested
O'Rourke.

Ellis shook his head and smiled bitterly.

"She may not look at it in so charitable a light as you do," he
replied, "so please put it all down to chance.  She does not know
that I have ever heard of you, except from her."

O'Rourke promised, and, after shaking hands, Ellis left his rival to
complete his toilet.  This he did in short order.

To return to the drawing-room across the square.  By degrees Hemming
drifted half around the room, and at last found himself against the
wall, between the door from the hallway and the table containing the
punch-bowl.

He was feeling a bit weary of it all, and sought refreshment in the
bowl.  He had almost decided to go home, when the door at his elbow
opened, and to his surprise O'Rourke entered, resplendent in white
breast, black tails, and eager smile.  This comrade tried and true
passed him without a glance--worse still, strode between his host and
hostess without a sign of recognition.  Glass in hand, and monocle
flashing, Hemming wheeled and stared after him.  Others looked in the
same direction.  Valentine and Marion smiled sheepishly at their
empty, extended hands.  But the lady of the gallant, shapely
shoulders and unaffected laughter faced the late arrival with the
most wonderful expression in the world on her face.  For a moment she
seemed to waver.  Then strong hands clasped hers.

"Bertram," she sighed.

"Dearest--am I too late?"

"But--oh, what do you mean?  See, they are all looking."

"I love you.  Didn't I ever tell you?  And I have searched the world
for you."

"Hush--see, they are all staring at us.  Oh, stop, or I shall
certainly cry."

She snatched her hands away from his eager grasp.

"But tell me," he begged, in a whisper, before she could turn away.
For a wonderful second their eyes read what the years of longing had
set behind the iris for love to translate.  Then she bowed her face,
and answered "Yes."

He did not know if she shouted it, or but murmured it beneath her
breath; it rang through his body and spirit like the chiming of a
bell.

"Drag me away," he whispered to Hicks.  "I don't want to make an ass
of myself before all these people."

"You've done that already.  Come into my study," said Hicks.

Hemming, scenting the truth, followed them.

"What is the matter with you?" asked Hicks.

"Don't you know your friends?  Is that the real girl?" asked Hemming.

O'Rourke ignored the questions.

"Give me a drink of something," he said, and, recovering a little of
his composure, smote Hemming violently on the back.

"Is it the real girl?" repeated Hemming, staggering.

"Do you think I'd make a mistake?" cried the lover.  He swallowed the
brandy brought him by Hicks, and requested a cigarette.  Their host
supplied it from a tin box on the mantelpiece, all the while eyeing
O'Rourke anxiously.

"What on earth made you act like that?" he asked.  "There'll be wigs
on the green when Marion gets hold of you."

"Oh, you must forgive him this time," laughed Hemming.  "For, as far
as I can gather, he has just met the lady of his heart after years of
separation."

"Do you mean Miss Hudson?  Why, where did you ever meet her?" cried
Hicks.

"It's a long story," replied O'Rourke, "but perhaps Herbert will tell
it to you--I can't spare the time."

He threw the half-smoked cigarette into the grate, and left the
study, closing the door behind him.

Hicks glanced uneasily at Hemming.

"I hope O'Rourke is not drunk," he said.  "An out and out city square
poet, who stays at home and writes about the rolling billows, I can
understand, but I never know what chaps like you and O'Rourke are up
to."

Hemming laughed.

"Don't worry about O'Rourke," he said.

Later in the evening Hemming found a gray-haired gentleman standing
alone, lost in contemplation of a black and white hunting picture.
He seemed dazed, and ill at ease.

"Mr. Hemming," he said, "my name is Hudson, and my daughter has just
introduced me to a Mr. O'Rourke.  Have you ever met him?"

"Several times," replied Hemming.

"A gentleman, I suppose?"

"Certainly."

"A man of property?"

"Inconsiderable."

"An adventurer, perhaps?"

"Just as I am."

"But, my dear sir, your connections and your reputation as a writer
places you above suspicion.  I had frequently heard of you before the
Pernamba episode."

"Thank you," said Hemming, with a crispness in his voice.

"But this man O'Rourke?" continued the other.

"O'Rourke," said Hemming, "lacks neither personal distinction nor
respectable family connections.  I have watched him under the most
trying circumstances, and his behaviour has always been above
criticism.  Also, he happens to be my dearest friend."




CHAPTER II.

A NEW RESTLESSNESS

  "All night long, in the dark and wet,
  A man goes riding by." ... R.L.S.


During the first few days following O'Rourke's sensational meeting
with Miss Hudson, Hemming saw very little of that headstrong young
man, for the lover spent his afternoons and evenings in making up for
lost time, and his mornings in rearing Spanish castles.  At first
Hemming took joy in his friend's happiness--then came envy, and bleak
disgust at his own case.  He sought refuge in hard work, and toiled
every morning with a half-heart for the subject in hand, and ears
pricked up for O'Rourke's babble of joy and content.  And behold, at
the end of a morning's grind, twenty pages for the fire.  Even his
novel came to a standstill.  The chapter of romance, which had the
joyful meeting of O'Rourke and Miss Hudson for its inspiration,
seemed to have no connection with the rest of the narrative, and no
excuse for existence save its own beauty.  He wondered if this
chapter were a story in itself--a breath of life's real poetry, too
fine and rare for marketing.  One night, alone in the sitting-room
brooding above the manuscript, he tried to rewrite it in verse.  A
new restlessness had him by the heart, lifting him, one moment, to
the heights of confidence, only to drag him down, the next, to the
depths of uncertainty and longing.  Three lines pulsed up to his
brain, and he wrote them down.  Then he opened his sitting-room
window and looked out.  The lights in the square gleamed down on the
wet pavement.  The black tree-tops threshed in the wind.  A cab sped
down from Fifth Avenue, under the arch.  A policeman paused beneath
him, and yawned at the bright entrance.

Hemming sniffed the wind, and decided to go for a walk.  He circled
the square three times.  Then he struck up Fifth Avenue, with his
hands in the pockets of his mackintosh and his stick under his arm.
The big old houses on each side of the avenue wore an air of kindness
that was not for him.  Lights were in the upper windows of most of
them.  One was still awake, and carriages waited in a solemn row at
the curb.  It seemed to Hemming that all the world but himself was at
peace.  The coachmen and footmen waited contentedly outside, while
their masters and mistresses laughed and danced within.  What had
these people to do with the bitterness of the unattainable?  His eyes
were turned in upon his own heart, and nothing seemed real but this
new restlessness, this nameless desire like a crying in the dark.  It
was not for fame, nor altogether for the power of expression, though
that, at one time or another, will tear the heart of every artist.
It was not bred of any regret for the past, nor inspired by
apprehension for the future.  On the fly-leaf of a friend's book he
had once read the words, "There is only the eternal now--an oasis of
fleeting actuality between two deserts of mirage."  Now he remembered
the words as he strolled up Fifth Avenue.  The Eternal Now!  Could it
give him no more solace than this?  For him would it be always this
empty room, from the windows of which he might look backward upon one
mirage and forward to another?  He felt in his pockets for something
to smoke.  They were empty, so he decided to keep on until he could
find a tobacconist's establishment.  Deep in thought, buffeted and
yet soothed by the bleak wind, he strode along, with little heed to
his course.  Presently, upon glancing up, he found himself on a side
street, before the area railings of a basement restaurant that he
knew well.  Here he could get a Porto Rican cigar to which he was
particularly partial, or cigarettes of pungent tobacco rolled in
sweet brown paper.  He opened the iron gate, descended the steps, and
rang the signal of the initiated on the bell.  The Italian woman
opened the door, and smilingly admitted him.  In the larger of the
two dining-rooms only one table was occupied, for stray customers
were not welcomed after the regular dinner hours.  At the table sat
two men whom Hemming knew, and one who was a stranger to him.  They
were drinking coffee and smoking, and from a chafing-dish in the
centre of the table drifted an odour with a tang to it.

Upon Hemming's entrance, Potts, assistant editor of a ten-cent
magazine, called to him to join them.  The Englishman did so, gladly.
Akerly, the illustrator, he knew, and he was introduced to the third,
a thick-shouldered, blond-haired youth, by name Tarmont.  Tarmont
also proved to be an artist.  He was a Canadian by birth, and had
just arrived in New York from a two years' visit in England.

"I was staying in Norfolk awhile," he said, "with some cousins, and I
met a friend of yours."  He looked intently at Hemming as he spoke,
and Hemming started eagerly in his chair.  But in a moment he sat
quiet again.

"More than one, for that matter," continued Tarmont.  "There was
Major Anderson,--he talked a great deal of you one night, after some
one had mentioned wars, and that sort of thing,---and there was an
old chap who argued about you with an old dame, the same evening.
Really, your memory seemed to bulk large in their eyes."  He paused,
and smiled at his companions.  "Oh, I forgot," he added; "there was a
lady--very pretty, too--who stopped playing ping-pong with me to
listen to what they were saying about Captain Hemming.  Of course she
didn't give that for a reason."

"What was her name?" asked Hemming.

Tarmont shook his head, and, producing his cigarette-case, lit a
mild, fat Turkish.

"I'm no good at names," he said, "but she seemed to be about
twenty-eight in age, and was beautifully set up, a trifle on the thin
side--and had ripping fine eyes, and hair with copper in it."

Even Hemming laughed.

"You must have spent all your precious time staring at her," remarked
Potts.

"Well, I did," confessed the artist, "for I was in love with her,
man.  Even now, whenever I draw a girl I make her waist and her arms.
As for the look in her eyes--my dear fellow, I can never forget it."

"What sort of a look was it?" asked Akerly, hugely amused.

"A look of longing," replied Tarmont, in tragic tones.  "It was
deucedly disconcerting, too, for the man she happened to be talking
to.  It always made me feel as if I had a hole in the middle of my
chest, through which she could see some chap whom she was anxious to
embrace.  We all noticed that Anderson didn't like it at all."

Potts and Akerly roared with laughter.

"You should be a novelist," said Potts.

Akerly ordered a round-bellied, wicker-covered flask.  But Hemming
only pondered over what he heard.

It was close upon two o'clock in the morning when Hemming got back to
the Wellington.  He found O'Rourke snug in his bed, smiling even in
his sleep.  He closed the bedroom doors softly, stirred up the fire,
and sat down to his story.  Still the wind galloped through the
square, slashing the tree-tops, and riding against the house-fronts.

It was dawn when Hemming laid aside his pen, knocked the smouldering
heel from his pipe, and went wearily to bed.




CHAPTER III.

A ROLLING STONE

The life of New York did not suit Hemming, although his work
progressed at a round pace.  He awoke in the mornings to no
expectations of joy or adventure.  The dulness of each approaching
day weighed upon him even before his eyes opened.  He saw but little
of O'Rourke after the luncheon hour, and, though he and Tarmont
became quite friendly, loneliness made his days miserable.  He began
to regret even the foolish, anxious days of the Pernamba revolution.
In his blue mood he would sometimes call on the Tetsons and
Hickses--but, alas, in conventional environment they had lost much of
their charm.  Hicks was growing fat and self-complacent.  Marion was
growing commonplace under the burden of formalities.  Even the old
man was undergoing a change--had already been weaned from his yellow
cigar and taught to wear a four-in-hand necktie until dinner-time.
As for Mrs. Tetson, kindly soul, why, she now spent most of her days
in contented slumber, and sometimes drove in the park of an afternoon.

Hemming sometimes went to dinner at the Hudsons' with O'Rourke.  Mrs.
Hudson was dead, and Helen and her father made up the family.
Hemming found these evenings quite worth while.  Miss Hudson was as
clever as she was charming, and as sympathetic as she was original.
Mr. Hudson was a kind-hearted, exceedingly well-bred banker, with a
cultivated taste in wines and cigars.  Under his daughter's
leadership he sometimes talked brilliantly.  After these dinners
Hemming would always stay as long as he could without feeling himself
in the way; then, after a word or two with Mr. Hudson in the library,
he would return to the lonely sitting-room and write letters to Miss
Travers.  These he burned as soon as written.  This was foolishness,
and worried Smith a good deal.

Tarmont, who guessed Hemming's case, got into the habit of dropping
in on his new friend at unseemly hours.  If Hemming wanted to talk,
Tarmont was ready to listen.  If Hemming wanted to listen, Tarmont
was glad to chat about his stay in England.  If Hemming wanted to
continue his work, Tarmont was delighted to smoke in silence,--always
those fat Eastern cigarettes,--with his heels on any convenient piece
of furniture that happened to be higher than his head.  One night he
brought a chap named Stanley along with him.  On this occasion his
visit was timed many hours earlier than usual--in fact, Hemming was
only half-way through his first cigarette since dinner.  Stanley
interested Hemming from the first--all the more so because Tarmont
whispered, while Stanley was examining a shelf of books, that he
would not stand for his companion's behaviour, or anything else, as
he had met him for the first time only that morning.

Stanley looked and sounded like a man without a care in the world,
though in his black hair shone threads of silver.  His manner was of
complete good-humour, despite the suggestion of heartless deviltry in
his dark eyes.  His complexion was of a swarthy clearness, like a
Spaniard's, and in the cleft of his massive chin gleamed a small
triangular scar.  Something about him suggested to Hemming a gull
blown inland.  He talked of a dozen things dear to Hemming's
heart,--of salmon fishing in Labrador, of the sea's moods, of London,
of polo, and of current literature,--treating each from the
view-point of an outsider.  The others were contented to sit quiet
and listen.  Many of his adventures by land and sea would have been
laughed at by ordinary stay-at-homes, or even by Cook's tourists, but
Hemming's knowledge of such things enabled him to see probabilities
where Tarmont suspected lies.  He was still spinning yarns when
O'Rourke came in.

Several days passed before Hemming again saw Stanley--restless,
painful days for Hemming, for Stanley's stories had reawakened all
that was vagrant in his blood; the other side of his heart was
longing for England, and pride and self-ordained duty held him in New
York.  Also, the condition of his dearest friend was getting on his
nerves.  To see the man who had so often sworn that change and
adventure were the breath of life to him eyeing furniture with
calculating glances, pricing dinner-sets, and drawing plans of
cottages on the margins of otherwise neglected manuscripts, struck
him as verging on the idiotic.  So he prowled about the town, and
smoked more than Smith considered good for him.  Late one night, upon
leaving an up-town studio, where a pale youth made priceless posters
and delectable coffee, he was overtaken by Stanley.

"Where are you off to?" asked Stanley.

"Home," replied Hemming.

"Are you sleepy?"

"No."

"Then I wish you'd let me come along.  I want to talk."

Hemming assured him that he would be delighted to listen, and,
hailing a belated cab, they drove to Washington Square.  O'Rourke and
Smith were both asleep.  Hemming closed their doors, and lit a couple
of candles to help the firelight make shadows up the walls.  Then
Stanley told something of his story.  In his youth he had inherited a
small fortune.  At first he had spent it foolishly, but after years
of knocking about, had learned how to save it, and even add to it.
The sea had been his ambition and delight ever since his first days
of freedom.  Early in his career he had qualified as a navigator.  He
told of trading-schooners in Newfoundland and Labrador, in which he
was interested; of a copper-mine somewhere that he had discovered
himself, and sold to an English syndicate; of a venture in the
sponge-fishery off the Florida coast, and of his apprenticeship to
pearl-diving.  He told of a blunt-nosed old barque in which he owned
a one-third interest and on which he had sailed as master for half a
dozen voyages, doing a very profitable smuggling business on the
side.  He even confessed to an irregular career as a journalist in
Australia.

"I have always found my profits," he said, "and managed to live well
enough.  It is an easy world, if you have any brains at all, but, for
all that, it is horrible.  The longer a man lives--the oftener he
saves himself from defeat--the gayer he makes his fun--then, when he
lies awake at night, the more he has to sweat and pray about."

Hemming nodded.  "They pile up," he remarked; then, fearing that
gloomy reflections might get the better of his guest's desire to
talk, he asked him why he had given up his berth aboard the barque.

"Had important business to look after ashore," replied Stanley.  In
bending over the table to light a cigarette at a candle, he looked
keenly at his host.

"And there was another reason--a damn sight better one," he said,
quietly.

He sank back in his chair and blew a thin thread of smoke.

"We were in Bahia with fish," he continued, "and I got foul of one of
the hands--for the last time.  The memory of his big face makes me
feel ill to this day."

"What!" exclaimed Hemming.  "Do you mean to tell me you let one of
the crew lay you away?"

"Not quite," laughed Stanley, harshly.  He touched the scar on his
chin.  "That's what he gave me--with a knuckle-duster," he explained,
"and what I gave him he took ashore to the hospital.  His messmates
were not particularly fond of him, but, for all that, I considered it
wise to live quietly ashore for awhile."

"You must have handled him rather roughly," remarked the Englishman.

"I killed him," said Stanley.  "I beat the life out of him with my
bare fists."

"You beast," said Hemming, his face blanched with horror and disgust.

"Oh, cheer up, old Sunday-school teacher," replied Stanley,
good-naturedly.  "I had reason enough for killing the slob.  He hit
me first, for one thing.  Then there was a girl in the case--a little
brown girl, who wouldn't look at a dirty brute like him, for all that
he told to the contrary.  He was ship's bully until he got aft to the
cabin."

He emptied his glass, and looked, with an expression of bored
expectancy, toward the darkest corner of the room.

"It's about time for him now," he said, "but maybe you don't believe
in ghosts.  He favours me with a sight of his ugly mug almost every
night.  Can you see him there?"

Hemming turned with a start, but only black shadows were in the
corner.  Stanley laughed.

"What a pity," he said, "for I am sure you would be more interested
than I."

Hemming drew close to the fire, and, when his back was turned,
Stanley, with a wary eye on the shadows, grabbed the decanter of
Scotch and gulped down a quantity of the raw liquor.  In a moment he
seemed himself again.  He set the decanter softly back upon the
table, and, with his hands in his trousers pockets, moved over to the
window and looked out at the cold roofs, level against the dawn, and
at the lift of the silent chimneys.  His jaws were set hard, swelling
the muscles under the swarthy skin.  He feared a hand upon his
shoulder--the heavy touch of a thick, toil-worn hand.  He awaited,
dreading, the rank breath of the dead seaman against his ear.
Presently he turned his head, and looked again at the shadowy corner.
It was lighter now.  But crouched there close to the floor, as he had
crouched upon the hot deck, with red hands knuckle down, and blood
upon the ugly, upturned face, was the bully of the barque.  The
candles burned softly, throwing their kindly radiance upon books and
pictures.  Hemming sat by the fire, puzzled, but at peace.  Wrenching
his gaze from the hideous apparition beyond, Stanley looked enviously
at Hemming--at the clean, brave face, whereon hardships and
adventures had hardened not a line.

Hemming fell asleep in his chair.  When he opened his eyes, the room
was full of sunlight and his guest had gone.  He could hear O'Rourke
splashing and singing in his bath, and Smith stood at his elbow with
a cup of tea.




CHAPTER IV.

"THE DEAR, DEAR WITCHERY OF SONG"

The two friends sat late over their breakfast.

"If anything happens to me before night, will you see that I am
decently buried?" said O'Rourke.

"I don't see what more is to happen to you--except bankruptcy,"
retorted Hemming.

"Oh, I intend getting down to work again right away," O'Rourke
hastened to say.  "That is part of my trouble," he added.  "You know
that Mr. Hudson, for all his good points, has some jolly queer
notions in his head.  He had not known me more than a week before he
asked me to let scribbling alone and give business a chance.  I told
him that scribbling was good enough for me.  He said prose was bad,
but to see a bushy chap, six feet high, writing poetry, simply made
him sick.  I was mad, but--well, I was also afraid.  I know him
better now.  He made me promise not to mention the conversation to
Helen, and tried to fire my soul with the desire for banking.  He
even offered me a job.  Well, to oblige him I determined to try to
give up writing, and I've been struggling along now for nearly three
weeks.  Gad, I'm sick of it.  Helen does not know, of course, what
the matter is, and thinks I'm out of condition, or that her company
is not inspiring; and all the time the finest things are swinging
about in my head, and my fingers are itching for a good corky
penholder.  Last night I realized that both my money and peace of
mind were leaving me, so I turned out early this morning and wrote
seven verses to Helen, and sketched out two stories, and an article
on the Jamaica fruit trade, and now I'm going to tell old Hudson that
he can go--I mean that I will not consider his proposition a moment
longer."

"And what about the lady?" asked Hemming.

"Who--Helen?  Oh, she'll make it warm for her father when she hears
about it, I can tell you," answered O'Rourke.

While Hemming interviewed Smith on household topics, O'Rourke
scribbled a quatrain on his cuff, and then invented conversation
between himself and Mr. Hudson.  This form of amusement is
exciting--better even than writing dialogue.  One cannot help
figuring as the hero.  The best time for it is when you are walking
alone, late at night, perhaps in a rainstorm.  The ideas swing along
with your stride, and the words patter with the rain.  But O'Rourke,
in his mood, found nine o'clock in the morning good enough, and, by
the time Hemming was ready to go out, had made sixteen different
wrecks of poor Hudson's ideas on the subject of authorship as a
profession.  His courage returned to its normal elevation, and as
they walked along he entertained Hemming with his brave dreams of the
future.

The friends parted company at the door of Hemming's publishers;
O'Rourke took a car for an up-town resident quarter.  He might have
seen Mr. Hudson at his office, which was on Broadway, but he wanted
to see Helen first, and assure himself of her support.

Helen was pleased, though surprised, at seeing him so early.  She
received him in the morning-room, which was delightfully informal.
He asked her to ride with him at four o'clock, and spoke as if this
was his reason for calling.  But she thought not.  Presently she
caught sight of the neat lettering on the otherwise spotless cuff,
and without so much as "by your leave" took hold of his wrist, pushed
back his coat-sleeve, and read the quatrain.

"My dear boy," she said, "it is fine.  And I was just beginning to
fear that this old town had made you stupid, or--or that my
companionship makes you dull.  I wondered if, after all, I was not
inspiring."

"You not inspiring!" exclaimed O'Rourke.  "Why, I have had to smother
more inspirations during the last few weeks than I ever had before in
all my life.  There's more inspiration in one of your eyelashes than
in all the hair on all the heads of all the other people in the
world."

"Silly," she said.

O'Rourke did not retort in words.

"But why did you smother the inspirations, you boy?" she asked,
presently.

"I can't tell you now," he replied.  "But at four o'clock I'll
confess all.  You want the red mare, I suppose.  I'm off now to see
your pater.  Wish me luck, little girl."

Helen smiled.

"I hope you don't let all your cats out of their bags as easily as
that," she said.  "But it will save you the trouble of making
confession later.  Yes, the red mare, please.  And, dear boy, I'll
have a little talk with father at lunch, and he will never make you
smother your dear inspirations again.  There, that will do.  Now run
away and beard the lion.  Really, you behave as if you were afraid of
never finding me again."

"Oh, I've made sure of you this time," he said.  Then he remembered
the seven verses, and, pulling them from his pocket, read them aloud.
The fire in the morning-room was wonderfully cheerful.  The clock
clicked softly, and chimed once or twice, unheeded.  They talked a
great deal, and made plans for the future, and O'Rourke smoked a
cigarette.  When Mr. Hudson came home to his lunch, he found them
still engaged in conversation beside the morning-room fire.  They
looked guiltily at the clock.  O'Rourke bowed to Mr. Hudson, and
extended his hand.

"I have decided, sir, to stick to scribbling," said he.

[Illustration: "'I HAVE DECIDED, SIR, TO STICK TO SCRIBBLING'"]

"Did you ever think of not sticking to it?" she asked.  O'Rourke
gazed straight ahead, and had the grace to blush.  A truthful woman
can always--well, act--with more ease than a truthful man.

"I am not fit for anything else," he said.

"Dear me, dear me," said Hudson, glancing nervously at his daughter.
"I haven't a doubt that you are right, Bertram.  A man should be the
best judge himself of what he is good for."

"And now," said the lady, "you may stay to lunch.  But you must hurry
away right afterward for the horses."

So O'Rourke remained to lunch, and was vastly entertaining, and Mr.
Hudson thawed again, having decided, during the soup, to accept the
inevitable.




CHAPTER V.

AN UNCANNY GUEST

Hemming finished his novel and took it to his publisher.  Then he
decided to go somewhere,--to get out of New York and back to the life
that meant something.  He confided his intention to O'Rourke, and
later to Smith.

"I wish you'd wait for awhile," pleaded O'Rourke, "and then I'd go
with you."

"How long do you want me to wait?" asked Hemming.

"Oh, until we're married."

"Great Scott, man, surely you don't intend deserting your bride
immediately after the marriage ceremony!"

"Not much," exclaimed O'Rourke, "but she could come, too."

Hemming stared, for he knew that many of his friend's jokes required
a lot of looking at; and Smith, who was tidying the table, hid his
smile in the duster.

"What have you been drinking?" inquired Hemming at last.  O'Rourke
made a movement as one awaking from a trance.  He smiled foolishly.

"Forgive me," he said; "for a moment I quite forgot what sort of
trips we used to indulge in.  Of course it would never do to take
Helen on jaunts like those."

"I wonder if you are old enough to take care of a wife," said his
friend, severely.

When Hemming returned to his rooms late that evening, he was still
undecided as to where he would go.  O'Rourke was away at some sort of
function.  Hemming had been walking for more than an hour, aimlessly,
but at a hard pace.  As he dropped wearily into his chair, Smith
entered, and handed him a paper from the table.  It was a note from
Stanley, written in red ink on the back of a laundry list.  It ran as
follows:


"Hurry 'round to my diggings as soon as you get this.  I want you to
meet my seafaring friend, who seems in a mood to honour me with a
visit of some length.  He is very droll, and looks as if he means to
stay.  I send this by our hall boy.

  "Merrily yours,
        "T. F. STANLEY."


He found Stanley alone in a big and lavishly furnished room.  He sat
at a table, whereon stood two glasses, a syphon of soda-water, and a
decanter.  He stood up upon Hemming's entrance.  "Ah," he said, "this
is good of you.  We had almost given up hopes of seeing you to-night."

"I was out," replied Hemming, "and just got your note.  Where is your
seafaring friend?"

"Allow me to introduce you," said Stanley.  "Mr. Kelley, my friend,
Mr. Hemming."

Hemming looked about him, open-mouthed, and, though he straightened
his monocle, he could see neither hair nor track of Mr. Kelley.

"What is your game?" he inquired, icily.

"It is as I feared," said Stanley, "and I assure you the loss is
yours.  I alone may enjoy Kelley's delightful society, it appears.
His very smile, as he sits there, has a world of humour in it.  He
tells such droll stories, too, of his adventures by land and sea."

Hemming caught him roughly by the arm.  "What damned nonsense is
this?" he asked.

Stanley pulled himself away, and the Englishman, fearless though he
was, felt daunted by the strange light in his host's eyes.

"If you don't like my friend, why, get out!" cried Stanley.  "If
you're a snob, and won't drink with a common sailor, and a dead one
at that, why, just say so.  But I tell you, Hemming, I like him.  I
didn't when I killed him, but I love him now.  You should hear him
sing."

For a moment Hemming stood undecided.  Then he removed his overcoat,
and drew a chair for himself up to the table.

"I am very stupid to-night," he said, smiling.  "Of course I'll have
a drink with you and Kelley.  Just a couple of fingers, old chap.
Kelley seems a good sort.  Do you think he will favour us with a
song?"

Stanley got another glass, and poured the whiskey for his guest.  His
face was haggard, though he was clearly pleased with Hemming's change
of manner.  "Oh, he is a good sort, sure enough," he said, "but I
don't believe you could hear him sing.  It is all I can do sometimes.
He has a fine voice, but he is a bit handicapped by the cut in his
lip.  Do you notice the cut in his lip?  I gave him that years ago.
Knocked four or five teeth down his neck, too, I guess.  Do you know,
Hemming, I was afraid, when you first came in, that you thought me
nutty."

For a little while Stanley seemed sunk too deep in meditation for
utterance.  He looked up presently, but not at Hemming.

"Kelley," he said, "_you_ can understand being afraid of a man, and
there was a time when _I_ was afraid of a ghost, but what do you
think of a man who is afraid of a woman?"  He paused for a moment,
and seemed to receive an answer, for he laughed and continued, "Just
my sentiment, old cock.  She isn't after him with a knife, either.
She is in love with him, and once he was in love with her, but now
he's afraid to go within miles of her.  He's in love with her, too;
at least, so they told Tarmont."

Hemming jumped from his chair.  "Who the devil are you talking
about?" he cried.

Stanley glared blankly for a moment.

"Why, sure enough; I'm talking about you," he said.

"See here, Stanley," exclaimed the Englishman, earnestly, "are you
drunk, or are you mad, or are you only making a fool of yourself, and
trying to make one of me?"

"I am not drunk," replied the other, slowly, "and why should I try to
make a fool of you?  Some one has saved me that trouble.  But I may
be mad, old chap, though I haven't taken to biting people yet."

Hemming started, and glanced about him uneasily.  "Well, I really
must go," he said; "I have some work to do," and he hurried away
without shaking hands.  He went to the nearest drug-store, where he
might use the public telephone.  He was about to ring up a doctor
when an amused chuckle at his shoulder arrested him.  He turned his
head.  There stood Stanley, leering pleasantly.

"Don't trouble yourself.  I'm not wanting medical advice just now,"
said Stanley.  In his confusion, Hemming blushed guiltily, and left
the telephone, and the shop, without a word.  As he passed into the
street, he heard Stanley laughing with the cashier, very likely
explaining his action as that of a harmless idiot.

Hemming made all speed to Washington Square.  O'Rourke had not yet
returned, but on a scrap of paper among his manuscripts he found
Tarmont's address.  With the help of a cab, he was soon in that
gentleman's studio.  But, to his disgust, he found that he was not
the only visitor.  Half a dozen men were lounging on the wide divans,
smoking.  Hemming managed to get Tarmont away from the crowd.

"Have you seen Stanley to-day?" he asked.

"Not since last night.  Why?"

"He is mad as a hatter.  Thinks he is entertaining some dead sailor
in his rooms."

"Heavens!" exclaimed the artist.

"He talked rather wildly about several things," said Hemming, "and
quoted you concerning a girl in England--and me."

"He may have heard me speaking of it," returned Tarmont, defiantly.
"He was here last night."

"Why didn't you tell me?" asked the Englishman.

"It was just country-house gossip," replied the artist, "and I hardly
thought you would thank me.  I imagined you were old enough to know
your own business best."

"It was country-house gossip, and now you have made studio gossip of
it," said Hemming, tartly.

"I am very sorry," said Tarmont, honestly.




CHAPTER VI.

THE BACHELOR UNCLE TO THE RESCUE

The years since Hemming's departure had brought little of joy to
Molly Travers.  At first anger at herself had occupied her mind.
Then had come a short-lived anger toward Hemming for not writing or
returning.  Now she looked at life with a calm heartlessness.  When
she learned the true story of Penthouse a white fury entered into
her, and she knew that there was not a person in the world whom she
would now trust,--save Hemming, the man who despised her.  Her mother
tried to comfort her; tried to reason with her; tried to soothe her
with platitudes and eligible suitors.  For her pains, the poor woman
was snubbed.  So were the suitors--at first.  But, as the seasons
wore around, with no word of love or forgiveness from the man whose
love she had tramped on, Miss Travers decided to take her revenge on
the world.  She took it daintily, and the world hardly knew what she
was about.  First, and always, there was Anderson.  At first, love
for the girl, and loyalty for his friend, struggled hard within him.
Love won against loyalty.  Then he found that she did not care.  He
was of a hopeful disposition, and continued to make a fool of himself
even to the last, as you shall see.  There were others,--a subaltern,
a lawyer, the son of a colonial premier, and a baronet.  It was
always so cleverly done that not one of them could lay the blame on
her.  Tarmont, the young artist, was the first to understand.  He
saved himself just in time.

Mrs. Travers was in despair, especially when the baronet rode away.
At last it occurred to her that still the memory of Hemming, the
adventurer, stood between her daughter and a comfortable settlement
in life.  Why any one should prefer the memory of a poor man to the
reality of a rich one, she really could not see.  She was afraid to
ask Molly for a solution of the problem (having learned something by
experience), so she wrote a note to her brother.  Mr. Pollin came
promptly, and gave ear to the narration of her troubles with polite
concern.  When she had made a piteous end of it, he told her that she
was fretting herself quite unnecessarily.

"I'll speak to Molly," he said, in a reassuring voice.

"But she does not like being spoken to," complained Mrs. Travers.

"Oh, she is really a sensible girl, and I am not afraid of her," said
Mr. Pollin.

"Had I better call her now?" suggested the lady.

"Lord, no!" cried her brother.  "I'll see her alone,--some other day."

One morning, Molly received a visit from her bachelor uncle, much to
her surprise.  What little she knew of her uncle rather attracted
her.  More than once she had detected signs of thought, even of
intellect, in his conversation.  Also, she had heard something of his
early career and of the articles he had written.  She greeted him
brightly.  He held her hand, and glanced around the depressing
drawing-room.

"My dear, this is no place to talk," he said.

"No, not to really talk," she agreed, "but it is not often used for
that."  Then she looked at him suspiciously.  "Are you going to scold
me about something, uncle?" she asked.

He laughed, and shook his head.

"Oh, no.  I am not as courageous as I look," he replied.

She wondered if this round, trim, elderly gentleman really imagined
that he looked so.

"I don't know where else we can go," she said.  "Mother is in the
morning-room, and the library is being cleaned."

"If you will come for a walk," he said, with a winning hesitancy in
his manner.

Molly smiled.  "I'll come," she answered, "though I am quite sure you
have something very disagreeable to say, otherwise why all this
trouble?"

"My dear girl," began Mr. Pollin, "I do not wonder at your suspicion.
Really, though, it is without grounds.  I simply want to become
better acquainted with an interesting and charming niece whom I have
hitherto somewhat neglected."

"Then it is a matter of duty," laughed Molly.

"On your part, my dear," replied her uncle, with a gallant bow.

"Then wait a moment," she said, and left the room.

The moment lengthened into twenty minutes, at the end of which time
Miss Travers reappeared, gowned for the street.

"By gad, I don't blame the young fools!" muttered Mr. Pollin to
himself, as he followed her down the steps.  At first their
conversation was of trivialities.  It soon worked around to books,
and Molly found, to her delight and surprise, that her uncle had not
altogether forsaken his first love, to wit,--literature.

"I have cloaked myself with the reputation of a gossip," he told her,
"to hide my greater sins of serious reading and amateur scribbling.
A literary man must be successful from the most worldly point of
view, to be considered with any leniency by his friends.  So I keep
dark, and enjoy myself and the respect of--of the people we know.
When I was younger, I was not so wise."

"I have heard about it," returned Molly, "and I always liked you for
it.  But I think you were a coward to give it up just as soon as you
came in for money."

Mr. Pollin smiled somewhat sadly.

"I was never anything more than a dabbler.  That is my only excuse
for shunning the muse in public," he replied.  "But here we are at
the door of my humble habitation."

"I have seen the door before.  It looks very nice," remarked Molly.

"On the other side of that door," said Mr. Pollin, standing still and
surveying the oak, "are two hundred and odd rare volumes, and three
times as many more or less common ones,--also some easy chairs, and a
man-servant capable of producing a modest luncheon."

"And cigarettes?" asked Miss Travers.

The gentleman gave her a look of pained inquiry.

"For you, my dear girl?" he queried.

"I have not smoked a cigarette for years," she replied, "but I
learned how--oh, long ago."

"I have some excellent cigarettes," rejoined Mr. Pollin, kindly, as
he fitted his latch-key in the door.

Molly found that, for a poor bachelor, her uncle lived very
comfortably.  She really did not see how one man and his valet could
use so many rooms.  The library was a charming place, walled with
shelves of books, and warmed and brightened by a glowing fire.  The
floor had no carpet, but was thickly strewn with rugs.  The chairs
were of modern pattern and wicker ware, built for comfort rather than
for looks.  The big writing-table had books, magazines, and
manuscripts scattered over it.

Mr. Pollin rang for his man, who appeared on the instant.

"My niece, Miss Travers, will lunch with me," he said.

"Very good, sir," replied the man, and hesitated at the door.

"Well, Scanlan?" inquired his master.

"General Davidson, sir,--and the lady, sir,--will that be hall?"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Pollin, "I'd forgotten the general.  You
don't mind old Davidson, do you, Molly?"

"I'm sure I do not know.  I have never met him," replied Molly.

"That will be all," said Mr. Pollin to the man, and, as soon as the
door closed, he turned to Molly and said: "Now, my dear, we have just
an hour before that old bore Davidson, with his everlasting plans of
battles, gets here, so we had better make the most of our time."  He
stirred the fire, and then seated himself close to his niece.  He
looked at her nervously, and several times opened his mouth as if to
speak, but always seemed to think better of it before he had made a
sound.

"Why, what on earth is the matter?" cried Miss Travers, staring with
wide eyes.

Mr. Pollin braced himself, and swallowed hard.  "My dear," he said,
"I want to confess that I promised your mother that I would speak to
you about--about--"

"About what, uncle?"  She breathed fast, and her face was anxious.

"Dash it all, about some silly rot!" cried the old gentleman, "and,
by gad, I don't intend to mention it.  You are quite old enough to
look after your own affairs,--of that nature,--and you are much wiser
than the people who wish to look after them for you."

"I know what it is," said Molly, slowly.

"Then don't give it another thought," said Mr. Pollin.  He patted her
hand gently, and sighed with relief.  "Now we can have a cigarette,"
he said.  But his real task was yet to come.  He wanted to know, by
her own showing, if she still cared for Hemming.  How the devil was
it to be done, he wondered.  He looked at the clock, and saw that the
general was not due inside another forty minutes.  He looked at
Molly.  She leaned back in his deepest chair, looking blissfully at
home and uncommonly pretty.  Her slight, rounded figure was turned
sidewise between the padded arms of the chair, while her grave gaze
explored the book-shelves.  Between two fingers of her right hand she
held a fat cigarette, unlighted.

"What a lucky man an uncle is," he murmured.

She wrinkled her eyes at him for a moment, and then laughed softly.
"That was very prettily said; but I would much rather you read to
me--something that you are very fond of.  I'll see if I like it.
Perhaps our tastes are a good deal the same, and, if so, you will be
able to save me a lot of time and temper by telling me what to read."

"A literary adviser," suggested Mr. Pollin, as he fumbled through a
stack of magazines and papers beside his chair.

"Surely you will not find anything in the magazines," she exclaimed.

In answer, he selected one from the heap, and opened it at a marked
page.

"What is it?" she asked.

"'Pedro, the Fisherman,' is the name of it," he replied, and
straightway began to read.

It was a simple story of a small, brown boy somewhere at the other
side of the world, and yet the beauty, the humble joy, and the humble
pathos, made of it a masterpiece,--for the seeing ones.  Pollin read
it well, with sympathy in his voice and manner, but with no
extravagance of expression.  When he came to the end (it was a very
short story), he got up hurriedly and placed the magazine in his
niece's lap.

"I must see how Scanlan is getting along," he said, and left the room.

Molly sat very still, with the magazine face down upon her knee.  Her
eyes, abrim with tears, saw nothing of the glowing fire toward which
they were turned.  There was no need for her to look, to see by whom
the story was written.  Who but her old lover could touch her so with
the silent magic of printed words?  She forgot, for awhile, the
unanswered letter and the weary seasons through which she had vainly
waited for his forgiveness.  Now she saw only the exile,--the
wanderer,--and her heart bled for him.  He would be wiser than of
old, she thought, but still gentle and still fearless.  A cynic?--no,
he could never be that.  Such a heart, though embittered against one
woman, would not turn against the whole of God's world.  She had
thrown aside the love that now read and translated the sufferings and
joys of outland camps and cities.  The very tenderness that enabled
him to understand the men and women of which he wrote had once been
all for her.

The magazine slid to the floor, and a loose page, evidently cut from
some other periodical, fluttered to one side.  Molly sat up and
recovered it.  Listlessly she turned it over.  Here were verses by
Hemming.  Her tears blotted the lines as she read:


  "When the palms are black, and the stars are low, and even
      the trade-winds sleep,
  God, give my longing wings, to span the valleys and hills
      of the deep!"


And again,--


  "The sailor's voyage is a thousand miles, 'bout ship, and a
      thousand more!
  By landfall, pilot, and weed-hung wharf,--to the lass at the
      cabin door.

  "But mine!--fool heart, what a voyage is this, storm-beaten
      on every sea,
  With never the glow of an open door and a lamp on the sill
      for me?"


When Mr. Pollin returned to the library, he found his niece with her
face hidden in the cushions of the chair, weeping quietly.  He had
half-expected something unusual, but the sight of her grief made him
feel like a fool.  He picked up the magazine, and replaced it neatly
on the top of the pile.  Then he noticed the clipping containing
Hemming's verses, damp and crumpled, at her feet.  That's what did
it, he thought, and was about to recover it, too, when his attention
was diverted by the sound of wheels at his curb.

"The general," he exclaimed.

Molly sat up quickly, and mopped her eyes.  "I think I must have
fallen asleep," she said, with her face turned away from her uncle.
But he was the more confused of the two.

"Yes, my dear," he said, "but now you must dry your--I mean, wake up,
for the general is at the door."  He went to the window.  With the
tail of his eye, he saw Molly stoop, quick as a flash, pluck
something from the rug at her feet, and thrust it into the front of
her dress.  Next moment the general was announced.

The lunch was sent in from the kitchen of a famous restaurant, and
was artfully served by Scanlan.  During the first part of the meal,
the general did little but eat.  He had a surprisingly healthy
appetite for a retired British soldier of his age and rank.  Later he
talked, beginning with his little say concerning the War Office.
That institution suffered severely.

"Bless my soul! what did they need of a commission to look into the
state of affairs?" he fumed.  "I could have told them about the
rifles years ago.  Why, man, I lugged one of the useless things to
Newfoundland with me, and first day on the barrens crawled to within
sixty yards of a stag, and sniped at him steady as a church,--with my
elbow on a rock, mind you.  Off walked the stag, so I popped again.
At that, he walked a bit farther, and shook his head.  My half-breed
sniggered.  'Damn you,' I said (there were no ladies there, Miss
Travers; I never swear before women and parson's), 'make me a target,
and I'll see what's the matter with this blessed shootin'-iron.'
Sacobie fixed up a target, and we both blazed at it--turn about--all
afternoon.  Every bullet went eighteen feet to the left.  Gad, if
they had only heard me that day, they would have guessed that
something was wrong with the sightin' of their precious rifles."

Next, he held forth on military matters in general, even down to
rations and uniforms for men in the field.  "The matter with our
Tommies," he declared, "is that the poor beggars haven't wind enough
to march with, tied about as they are with a lot of idiotic straps."

Presently, much to Molly's surprise, he pushed his wine-glasses to
one side, and asked for a copy of "Where Might Is Right."

"This chap, Hemming, considering his lack of age, knows a wonderful
lot about it," he said, when he got the book in his hand.  He
fluttered the pages, and soon found a passage that seemed to please
him.  He straightway read it aloud, in ringing tones and with a grand
air.

"I call that inevitable--inevitable," he cried, glaring the while at
his host and the lady, as if looking for contradictions.

"It strikes me as remarkably true," agreed Mr. Pollin.  Molly said
nothing, but something of the inner glow of pride must have shone in
her face, for her uncle glanced at her, and smiled knowingly.

The general left shortly after lunch, for he was a man of
affairs,--mostly other people's.

"I must go now," said Molly.  "Mother will be wondering what you have
done with me."

Mr. Pollin took both her hands between his, and pressed them warmly.

"Do you love Bert Hemming?" he asked.

She turned her face away, and did not answer.  But he felt her hands
tremble in his, and saw the red glow on neck and cheek.

"Bring him back," he said.  "If you love him, why ruin your own life
as well as his?"

"I wrote to him--long ago--and he--he took no notice," whispered
Molly.

"And you never wrote again?" inquired her uncle.

"Why should I?  He despises me,--or he would have answered that
letter.  I--I dragged my heart before him," she sobbed.

Mr. Pollin let go her hands, and slipped one arm around her shoulders.

"My dear little girl," he replied, "letters have been known to go
astray,--just as conclusions have."  He patted her bowed head with
his free hand.  "Why, once I lost a letter with a money order in it,"
he added, seriously.

Molly brushed away her tears.  "I must go now," she said, moving away
from him.  She put up her hands to straighten her hair.  Then a
sudden thought occurred to her, and she plucked Mr. Pollin's sleeve.

"Uncle, we must both forget about to-day," she said.

"Not I," he replied.  "I am going to write--"

He stopped short, spellbound by her sudden change of countenance and
manner.  Her eyes fairly flamed.  Her whole body trembled.

"You would not dare!" she cried.  "Oh, you would not dare!  Are you,
too, nothing but a busybody?"

Poor old Pollin gasped.

"Good Lord!  I meant it for the best," he exclaimed, weakly, "but
just as you say, my dear."

He took her home, and, by the time her door was reached, her manner
toward him had again warmed.

"It was a charming lunch," she said, as they shook hands.

Mr. Pollin sat at his writing-table, and dipped his pen in the ink,
only to dot lines on his blotter.

"The girl was right," he said, "I don't dare."

He lit a cigarette, and for several minutes contemplated wreaths of
smoke, without moving.  Suddenly he leaned forward, took a fresh dip
of ink, and scribbled:


"DEAR BERT:--You are a fool to stay away,--unless, perhaps, you no
longer care for the girl."


Without adding his signature to this offhand communication, he
enclosed it in an envelope, and addressed the same to Hemming, care
of his New York publishers.




CHAPTER VII.

  HEMMING RECEIVES HIS SAILING ORDERS FROM A
  MASTER NOT TO BE DENIED

Stanley was taken to a private lunatic asylum, and, for all we know
to the contrary, his seafaring friend went along with him.  Hemming
and Tarmont looked through his papers, and found that his father was
living (and living well, too) in Toronto, Canada.  He was a judge of
the Supreme Court, no less.  They wrote to this personage, stating
the crazy man's case, and in reply received a letter containing a
request to enter the patient at a private asylum, and a substantial
check.  The judge wrote that he had not seen or heard from his son
for seven years, and, though he had always been willing to supply him
with money, had been unable to discover his address.  He arrived in
New York soon after his letter,--a big, kindly man with white hair
and red cheeks, and a month later took his son home with him.  That
was the last Hemming saw or heard of Stanley,--of the man to whom he
owed more than he had knowledge of.

O'Rourke's affairs went along merrily.  He wrote and sold stories and
poems.  His name began to appear each month on the cover of a certain
widely read magazine.  Everything was in line for an early wedding
and a career of happiness "for ever after."

One morning, while O'Rourke was hard at work, Hemming, who had gone
out immediately after breakfast, returned to their sitting-room and
laid a red leather case on his friend's manuscript.  O'Rourke
completed a flowing sentence, and then straightened up and opened the
case.  A very fine brier-root pipe was disclosed to his view.

"Where did you steal this?" he inquired.

"It is a present for you," said Hemming, dropping into a chair.
O'Rourke put down his pen, and eyed his friend with an air of
surprise.

"A present!" he exclaimed.  "Why, my dear chap, surely I've been
taking anything of yours that I happened to want long enough for you
to see that there is no need of this depressing formality."

"But we've been such chums."

"You haven't just found that out, I hope."

Hemming shook his head.

"I'm going away," he explained, "and I suppose it will be without you
this time."

"I wouldn't mind going to Staten Island," replied O'Rourke, "but for
any farther than that you will have to mark me out."

"I sail for England to-morrow," Hemming informed him.

"Have you been--have you received a letter, or anything of that
kind?" inquired his comrade.

"No, but Stanley told me I was a fool not to go back."

"Could have told you that myself."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Thought you knew it."

"I didn't know it,--and I am not sure, even now," retorted Hemming.

"Well, old man," rejoined O'Rourke, "you know her better than I do,
so suit yourself.  But my advice is the same as Stanley's."

He stared moodily at the Englishman.  In fact, he was already lonely
for his energetic, steel-true roommate.  What days and nights they
had seen together!  What adventures they had sped, knee to knee!
What vigils they had kept by the camp-fires and under the
cabin-lamps!  And now a girl!--but at that thought his brow cleared.

"I think we have both done with the old pace," he remarked, pensively.

"I wonder," said Hemming.

That night about a dozen men gathered in Tarmont's studio.  Hemming
was the guest of honour.  The big room was soon filled with smoke.
There were many things to drink and a few things to eat.  Songs were
sung, and stories told.  Hemming tried to make a speech, and O'Rourke
had to finish it for him.  After that, Tarmont suggested leap-frog.

"Just wait until I do my little stunt," begged Potts.  He tuned his
banjo, and, to an accompaniment of his own composing, sang the
following verses:


  "'You may light your lamps to cheer me,
    You may tune your harps for me,
  But my heart is with my shipmates
    Where the lights are on the sea.

  "'You may wine me, you may dine me,
    You may pledge me to the brim,
  But my heart is pledging Charlie,
    And you have no thought of him.

  "'You may cheer me with your friendship,
    As you are gentlemen,
  But the friend I want the hand-grip of
    Is not within your ken.

  "'So keep your praise, and keep your blame,
    And save your good red wine,
  For though this town be home for you,
    It is no home of mine.

  "'And when your lights are brightest,
    Ah, then, across the glare,
  I pledge my friends of yesterday,
    And love of otherwhere.'"


The applause was loud and long.  They patted the singer on the back,
and thumped him on the chest.  They gave him three cheers and a drink
(which made more than three drinks).  O'Rourke shouted for their
attention.

"All Potts did was make up the silly tune," he cried.  "I wrote the
verses--with my little pen."

When Hemming and O'Rourke got back to their rooms, they found a
steamer-trunk and a couple of bags packed and strapped, and Smith
snug abed.  The time was 2.30 A.M.  They lit the fire, changed their
coats, and drew their chairs to the hearth.  O'Rourke placed a
decanter and glasses on the corner of the table.  They talked a
little in murmured, disjointed sentences.  Each followed his own
thoughts as they harked back to the past and worked into the future.
They sipped their Scotch and soda, with meditative eyes on the fire.
O'Rourke sighed.  "Thank God, Helen likes New York no better than I
do," he said.

Hemming looked up and nodded.

"My boy," he said, gravely, "if I ever find you and Helen blinking
out such a stupid existence as the thing some of our friends call
life, I'll drop you both."

"No danger of that," laughed O'Rourke, happily.

"Remember the Hickses," warned Hemming.

For long after O'Rourke had turned in, Hemming continued his musings
by the sinking fire.  Just as the dawn gleamed blue between the
curtains, he lit a candle, and unrolled the final proof-sheets of his
novel.  By the time these were corrected to his satisfaction, the
room was flooded with sunshine, and Smith was astir.




CHAPTER VIII.

HEMMING WOULD PUT HIS DREAMS TO THE PROOF

On arriving in London, Hemming went straight to the Portland Hotel.
As soon as Smith had unpacked enough of his things to allow him to
dress, he chartered a cab and hastened toward his old haunts.  It was
close upon seven o'clock; the night falling black with an upper fog,
and the streets alive with the red and white lights on either hand,
and the golden eyes of the hansoms.  At his old club in Piccadilly he
loitered for awhile on the lookout for familiar faces, and wondering
where he could find Anderson.  His courage, which had often failed
altogether during the voyage--especially in the early mornings--was
now at its height.  In this brave mood he felt quite sure that all
those lonely years had been nothing but a frightful, foolish mistake.
He wanted to talk it over with Anderson.  His old friend would give
him some tips as to how the land lay, and what obstacles to look out
for.  From a waiter, he learned that Major Anderson was then in town,
and frequented this club, so, leaving a note for him, he went on foot
to Piccadilly Circus.  At the Trocadero, he found a quiet table, and
ordered a quiet dinner.  As he waited, he watched the people in the
place with happy interest.  They came, as he had so often seen them
come there before, these men and women in evening dress, laughing and
whispering, but now talking of a hundred things to which he was a
stranger.  The waiters slid about grave and attentive as of old.  The
women pulled at their gloves, and glanced about them, and more than
once Hemming bore, undisturbed, the scrutiny of fair and questioning
eyes.  But throughout the dinner, he had some difficulty in curbing
his impatience.  He was keen to put this dream of his to the test;
and yet, with the thought of going to her and looking into her eyes
for what his heart so valiantly promised him, came always the memory
of that last parting.  Her injustice had burned deep, but still more
painful was the recollection of her brief show of relenting,--for
then he had turned away.

Still in a brown study, he sipped his coffee and inhaled his
cigarette.  Visions from the days of his old happiness came to him,
and his hand trembled as it never had in anger or fatigue.  He built
dreams of the wonderful meeting.  Would her eyes lighten as Helen
Hudson's had when O'Rourke returned from his exile?

Some one touched his elbow.  He started up, and beheld Anderson.

Though the major said the usual things, and shook hands with extreme
cordiality, Hemming noticed a tinge of reserve in the greeting.

"This _is_ a surprise," stammered Anderson, examining the tip of his
cigar with an exhibition of interest that seemed to the other quite
uncalled for.

"You don't think it is loaded, do you?" inquired Hemming, smiling
patiently.

"Loaded!" exclaimed the major, with a start; "oh,--the cigar.  Ha,
ha."

Hemming's smile became strangely fixed, as he surveyed his friend
across the little table.  Could this be the same old Anderson, he
mused; and, if so, why so confoundedly chesty?  Could it be that a
staff appointment had come his way?  He gave up the riddle, and
related some of his adventures in Pernamba, and told of the end of
Penthouse's misguided career.

"I saw something about the revolution and your heroism in the New
York papers," said Anderson, "but there was no mention of Penthouse."

"He called himself Cuddlehead at that time,--and really it was hardly
worth while enlightening the press on that point," replied Hemming.
"He was related to Mrs. Travers," he added.

The major moved uneasily in his chair.

"By the way," continued Hemming, with a poor attempt at a casual air,
"how are Mrs. Travers and Molly?"

"I believe they are very well," replied his friend.

"See here, Dick," cried the man of adventures, with a vast change of
manner, "I must show my hand.  Why should I try to bluff you, anyway?
Tell me, old chap, do you think I have half a chance."

The colour faded from the major's ruddy cheeks, and he looked forlorn
and pathetic, despite his swagger and size.

"Half a chance," he repeated, vaguely,--"half a chance at what?"

"You used to know well enough," cried the other.  "Damn it, are my
affairs so soon forgotten?"

"I thought you had forgotten them yourself.  It is a long time since
you went away, you know," replied Anderson, scarcely above a whisper.
Drops of sweat glistened on his face.

"A long time,--yes, I know," murmured Hemming.

Presently he said: "Dick, you have not answered my question."

Anderson cleared his throat, fingered his moustache, and glanced
about uneasily.  But he made no reply.

"You don't think I have any chance?  You think she does not care for
me?" questioned Hemming, desperately.

He reached over and gripped his friend's wrist with painful vim.
"Tell me the truth, Dick, and never mind my feelings," he cried.

Anderson withdrew his arm with a jerk.

"Can't you see?  Are you such a damn fool!" he muttered.  "You come
along, after you have had your fun, and expect me to produce the
joyous bride,--the blushing first-love."

"What the devil is the matter with you?" asked Hemming, aghast.

"So you imagine the world stands still for you,--Mr.
Commander-in-Chief?  You had better hurry back to your nigger troops,
or they'll be having another revolution."

Hemming looked and listened, and could believe neither his eyes nor
his ears.  Was this the same man who, once upon a time, had been his
jolly, kindly friend?  The once honest face now looked violent and
mean.  The once honest voice rang like a jealous hag's.  Hemming
stared, and stared, in pained astonishment.  Then, by some flutter of
his companion's eyelids, understanding came to him.

"Dick," he said, "Dick, I am sorry."

By this time Anderson looked thoroughly ashamed of himself.  "For
God's sake, Bert, get out and leave me alone," he cried, huskily.
"I've been drinking too much, you know."

Without another word, Hemming paid his bill and left the place.
Beyond the fact that Anderson was in love with Molly, he did not know
what to make of that honest soldier's behaviour.  Perhaps Molly loved
Anderson, and Anderson was too loyal to his old friend to further his
own suit?  That would make the mildest man act like a drunken collier.

Hemming had been striding along at a brisk pace, but, when this idea
got hold of him, he turned in his tracks and went back to the
Trocadero, eager to tell his friend to go ahead and win the happiness
in store for him.  But when he reached the place, one of the waiters
informed him that Major Anderson had gone.  He immediately returned
to the club.  By this time, he had made up his mind to write to Miss
Travers, and say good-bye--for ever.  On the club stationery he wrote:


"DEAR MOLLY:--My dreams have brought me back to England, and almost
to you.  But I met Anderson a little while ago, and you will
understand why I do not call on you now.  It was foolish of me to
hope,--but I am afraid I have been a great many kinds of a fool
during my aimless life.  I intend leaving town in a day or two, and
returning to one or other of my distant stamping-grounds.  Please
think kindly of me, for 'old sake's sake.'  I wish you all the
happiness life and love can give.

    "As ever,
        H.H."


He gave the letter to a page, to be immediately posted, and then sat
down in a deserted corner and pretended to read.  His thoughts were
in a turmoil, and his heart ached dully.  It seemed to him that fate
was pressing him beyond human endurance.  His gloomy meditations were
interrupted by a genial voice addressing him by his Christian name,
and, looking up, he found Mr. Pollin at his elbow.

"You are prompt, my boy," remarked Mr. Pollin.

Hemming frowned.  What did the old ass mean by saying he was prompt,
he wondered.

"I got to town to-day," he replied, coldly.

Pollin pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow.  "Let me see,--ten,
eleven, twelve,--why, that is very quick work.  I mailed the note
only twelve days ago," he said.

"What note? and what are you talking about?" asked his bewildered
hearer.

"The note to you."

"I did not get any note."

"Then what the devil brought you here?"

"That is my own business, sir," retorted Hemming, angrily.

"Easy, easy, Herbert," cried the old man.

"I beg your pardon, sir, for speaking to you like that," replied
Hemming, "but I am in a nasty temper to-night, and I really can't
make out what you are driving at."

"Granted, my dear boy; granted with a heart and a half," exclaimed
Pollin.  "But tell me," he asked, "do you mean to say that my note,
advising you to come to London, never reached you?"

"That is what I mean to say," Hemming assured him.  Suddenly his face
brightened, and he leaned forward.  "Why did you advise me to come to
London?" he asked.

Mr. Pollin surveyed him critically.  "We'll just sit down and have a
drink," he said, "and then maybe I will tell you."

Hemming's curiosity was sufficiently excited to prompt him to comply
with this suggestion.  He wondered what old Pollin could have to say
to him, for they had never seen much of each other, nor had they been
particularly friendly.  But he was Molly's uncle,--there lay the
golden possibility.  He smothered the thought.  More likely, the
communication would be something about Anderson's prospects.  He
smiled grimly, and swallowed half his whiskey at a gulp.

Mr. Pollin settled himself more comfortably in his chair.  "I like
your work," he began, "and have always followed it carefully.  Your
Turko-Grecian book strikes me as a particularly fine achievement.
What little of your fiction and verse I manage to hunt out in the
magazines appeals to me in more ways than one.  It is good work.  But
even better than that, I like the good heart I see behind it.  When,
a few days ago, Mrs. Travers asked me to protest with her daughter
for refusing eligible suitors, I felt it my duty to look into the
case,--hers and yours.  I did so, and came to the conclusion that she
still cares for you more than for any one else.  That is my reason
for writing you to come home."

"Does she know that you have written to me?" queried Hemming, his
face and heart aglow.

"No, indeed, but I'm afraid she may suspect when she sees you,"
replied Mr. Pollin, with some show of uneasiness.

"And what about Anderson?" asked Hemming.

"Dick Anderson?  Ah, he is exceedingly stupid, or he would have given
up long ago.  He never had the ghost of a chance," replied the
beaming match-maker.

Hemming stood up, and grasped the other warmly by both hands.  "I got
along without your letter," he said, "but I don't know what might
have happened by now if you'd not stumbled over me to-night.  I saw
Anderson, you know, and somehow got the idea into my head that I was
out of the game."

"Out of the game," laughed Pollin.  "No fear of that, my boy.  Come
over to my diggings, and we'll have a smoke on it."

As he led the prodigal from the club, clinging affectionately to his
arm, he warned him of Mrs. Travers.  "Don't pay any attention to
her,--unless she happens to be polite," he said.

Late that night, after Hemming had returned to his hotel, Mr. Pollin
sat up and penned a note to his niece.




CHAPTER IX.

TO PART NO MORE

  "The eyes that wept for me, a night ago,
  Are laughing now that we shall part no more."


It was later than usual when Molly awoke that morning.  It seemed to
her that the room looked brighter than it had for a long time.  The
pictures on the walls shone with a hitherto unnoticed glow.  She lay
still for awhile, recalling the night's dream, piecing the fragments
one by one.  The dream had been altogether pleasant and unusual.  She
had been in strange and delightful countries,--

      "Where below another sky
  Parrot islands anchored lie."

She had seen the palms shake their stiff foliage against the steady
winds.  She had gone along a white street, gleaming between deep
verandas, and Hemming had walked beside her, talking of his
adventures and his hopes.  She had heard surf-music drifting in from
moonlit reefs, and the tinkling of mandolins out of alleys of roses.
She had gone through a land of sweet enchantment with her lover's
hand in hers.

Molly dressed slowly, the spell of her dreaming still upon her,
haunting her like a half-remembered voice.  At the breakfast-table
she found three letters beside her plate.

"You seem to be a woman of affairs, my dear," said Mrs. Travers,
eyeing the letters greedily from her end of the table.  The dame had
finished her breakfast some time before, but, having examined the
three envelopes carefully, curiosity about their contents kept her in
her place.

When Molly saw Hemming's handwriting,--and on the stationery of a
London club at that,--she leaned back, and for the flight of a dozen
heart-beats kept her eyes tight shut, and her hands clinched on the
arms of the chair.

"My dear, what is the matter?" cried her mother, in tones of
surprised concern.  She, too, had recognized the writing, however.

"I felt dizzy--just for a moment," answered Molly.  Then she opened
the letter.  She read it again and again, making nothing of it, save
that he was in London, had come there to see her, and was going away
again.  Love of her had brought him, but why should he go away?  What
had Major Anderson to do with it?  Now her heart pulsed joy through
her veins, and now fear,--and they both hurt.  Then came the fearful,
humiliating question,--could it be that her uncle had sent for him?

"What has that shameless adventurer written to you?" asked Mrs.
Travers, purple with curiosity, and with fear that the chances for
her daughter to marry a fortune were ruined.

"What shameless adventurer?" cried Molly, looking up with flashing
eyes.

"Herbert Hemming."

"How do you know the letter is from Herbert Hemming?"

"I--I happened to notice the handwriting."

"Paul Pry," cried Molly; and with that she burst into tears.  Mrs.
Travers sailed from the room, much against her inclination, but her
dignity demanded it of her.  Left to herself, Molly stifled the sobs,
brushed the tears from her eyes, and opened the other letters.  Her
uncle's she read with wonder and delight.  It ran thus:


"DEAR NIECE:--Herbert is in town.  I ran across him at the club.  He
was in very low spirits, suspecting something between you and Major
Anderson; but I soon cheered him up.  Now is my time to confess that
I wrote to H.H. a few days ago.  Fortunately he had started for
London before receiving the letter (has not seen it yet), so there is
nothing for you to get angry at a doting uncle about.  He tells me
that never a scratch of a pen has he received from you, since the
beginning of your misunderstanding.  He means to call on you
to-morrow, at the informal hour of ten in the morning.  His happiness
is all in your hands.

  "Your loving Uncle."


Anderson's communication,--a hopeless scrawl, in which he said that
Hemming was in town, and that he himself was going to France for a
little while--only interested her in that it proved to be a key to
her lover's message.  Presently she glanced up at the clock.  "Within
half an hour," she cried, softly, and, gathering together her papers,
she left the room.

Of course Hemming was twenty minutes ahead of time.  Mr. Pollin might
have known that, under the circumstances, a lover always allows
thirty minutes for a ten-minute cab-drive.  Unfortunately, Mr.
Pollin, though an estimable man in a hundred ways, did not know
everything about a lover.  He had very seldom been one himself, even
of the mildest type.  So when Hemming, short of breath, glorious of
visage, and flushing hot and cold,--in fact, with all the worst
symptoms of a recruit going into action,--entered the long and formal
drawing-room, he was received by Mrs. Travers.  This was a long way
from what Pollin had led him to expect.  He stood aghast; he got a
grip on himself, and, bowing low, extended his hand.  Mrs. Travers
ignored his hand.  But, for all her awe-inspiring front, she, too,
was agitated.  She knew that she was about to play a desperate game.
Fever and rum had made the Brazilian colonel's game seem feasible.
Conceit, stupidity, and love of money were her excuse for making a
fool of herself.

"Mr. Hemming, I believe," she said.

This was too colossal for Hemming.  He could not pass that, however
eager he might be to get this unexpected interview over with.  He
lifted one hand close to his face and stared at it intently for
several seconds.

"'Pon my word," he said, "I believe you are right.  May I ask if you
recognized me by my eyeglass or my feet?"  His smile was politely
inquiring.  He looked as if he really wanted to know.

"You will leave this house immediately," cried the lady, as soon as
she could command sufficient breath.  "My daughter is very wise in
deciding to have nothing to do with you."

This shot told, and his manner changed to one of haggard doubt and
dread.

[Illustration: "AT THAT MOMENT MOLLY TRIPPED INTO THE ROOM"]

Mrs. Travers saw her advantage, and, knowing that her time was
limited, hastened to follow it up.  But at that moment Molly tripped
into the room.  At sound of the light step and whispering of skirts
Hemming turned toward the door.  The old woman and all her works were
forgotten, for Molly's eyes proved the truth of his dreaming.  But he
did not approach her.  She paused on the threshold, not speaking, not
smiling, but with the whole dear secret in her radiant face.  How
long was it--seconds or centuries--that her eyes looked into his
across the furniture of that formal room?  Presently, with a little
catch in her breath, like a sob, she spoke, turning her gaze to Mrs.
Travers.

"Mother," she said, "when I tell you that I overheard your last
remark, I think you will understand and forgive the anger and--and
disdain which I feel toward you."

Mrs. Travers, suddenly grown old and ugly, moved toward the door.
She reeled, and nearly fell.  Hemming sprang forward, caught her
firmly and gently, and helped her to a couch.  By this time her great
face was dead-white, and her eyelids fluttering.  He tore open the
neck of her dress, and then ran to the dining-room for water.  This
he used upon her with a liberal hand, and soon she gasped and opened
her eyes.  Molly put her arms around her lover's neck.

"What a brute I am," she sobbed; "but--but she called you a shameless
adventurer--and she--lied to you."

Mrs. Travers completed her recovery as best she could, without
further assistance.




CHAPTER X.

A NEW COMMAND

O'Rourke sent Mr. Pollin's letter back to Hemming, and Molly
treasured it, unopened, among her dearest possessions.  Mr. Pollin
had several serious talks with his sister, but for all the good that
came of them he might have saved his breath to blow smoke with.  That
cantankerous, silly old lady, firmly believing that her daughter had
treated her unkindly, refused to have anything more to do with
Hemming.  Before a few friends as biased or stupid as herself she
posed as a Christian martyr.  What a pity there were no pagan
emperors around, with boiling oil and thumbscrews!

One morning, about three weeks after Hemming's return, he and Molly
rode together in Hyde Park.  Despite Mrs. Travers, and thanks to Mr.
Pollin's library and another friend's saddle-horses, they managed to
meet for several hours every day.  On this occasion, as they walked
their horses shoulder to shoulder, they seemed deep in some great
plan.

"I think good old Santosa has had his finger in it," said Hemming.
"You see, he married the daughter of the secretary of war not very
long ago.  Rio is a beautiful place," he continued, "and a general,
even of the Brazilian army, is not a person to be lightly treated.
Remember that, dear!"

"It will be simply glorious," cried Molly.  "But are you quite sure
that I have enough clothes, and that there is no immediate danger of
a revolution?"

"I should think one gown would be enough for one wedding," he
replied, smiling, "and as for a revolution--bah!  Brazil is as safe
as a nursery these days."

"You must promise me not to give up your writing," she said.

"I could not give it up if I tried.  I am under contract for two
novels inside the next two years," he answered.

Molly shook her head at that.  They touched their nags to a canter,
and for a little while rode in silence.

"You took your time to find out," called Molly, presently.

"I am afraid I can't make it any clearer to you," he replied.

Molly drew her horse toward his, and leaned forward in the saddle.

"Dearest boy," she said, "I can't believe that you will ever forget
how cruel I was to you, though I know that you forgave me long ago."

"The memory of it is buried somewhere in the Pernamba bush, with the
body of Penthouse," he answered, gently.

"But tell me," she began, and paused.

"Anything," he laughed back.

"Did you ever care for Marion Tetson?"

"Not even in those days--when she was really charming."


Several months later, at the house of a mutual friend, Mrs. Travers
met General Davidson.  The general beamed upon her with marked
cordiality.

"I am glad to know that some English people appreciate a good thing,"
he said.

The rest of the company turned to see what was going on, and the old
lady stared.

"I am speaking of your distinguished son-in-law, Herbert Hemming,"
continued the general, in a dress-parade voice, "and I assure you,
madam, that when he took command of the military district of Rio
Janeiro, England lost a valuable man.  It is a crying shame," he
added, glaring around, "that the English government had not Mrs.
Travers's discernment."

The dame mumbled a meaningless reply.  A curate sniggered behind his
hand.  Later Mrs. Travers cornered her hostess.

"Why didn't the ungrateful girl tell me?" she asked.

"Tell you what, my dear?"

"About that Rio Janeiro military district."

"You should have read the papers, my dear," replied her hostess,
coldly; "then, perhaps, you would not have made yourself so
ridiculous."



THE END.



GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD., ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, E.C.









*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74158 ***