The law's delays are proverbial, and the task of getting even with Mr Noddy Kinahan involved Hughie in endless encounters with those in high places, several appearances (with suite) in the abodes of the Law, and another trip to New York-by Cunarder this time.

However, grim determination will accomplish most things; and when some mouths later Hughie finally sailed from New York for his native land, the labour of love had been completed, and Mr Noddy Kinahan was duly regretting, for a term of years, the fact that he had ever been born.

paid

This consummation was followed by another, depressing but inevitable. The Orinoco Salvage Company, Company, having served its purpose, Nature's debt and ceased to exist. The circumstances connected with its demise, together with the respective fates of Hughie's little band of Argonauts, will best be gathered from the following epistolary excerpts:

No. I. (N.B. Spelling corrected.)

c/o MISTRESS HOWIESON, 17 CANDLISH STREET, GREENOCK.

To H. MARRABLE, Esq.,

SIR, I thank you for cheque, and have disposed of same. I also thank you for offer to find

a job for me. But I would prefer to bide by you, as I feel I will not can get a better job than that. I would like fine to be your servant. You will be needing some one to redd up your quarters and keep your clothes sorted, now you are ashore. (Women is no to be trusted.) Of course I would not want a big wage: the siller from the Orinoco will do grandly for a long time. I ken fine the way to wait at table and clean silver, having been steward, as I once telled you, on the old Stornoway, where they had a cuddy full of gentry every trip.-Your servant (I am hoping),

JNO. ALEX. GOBLE.

No. II. (Extracts. No date or address, but obviously written in a public-house.)

So you must take the money back. It is no use to me: all I should get out of it would be a d-d bad headache. Also, it might give me ideas above my station, which is bad for the lower orders at any time. Give it to Walsh; but don't let on, of course, that it comes from me: let him believe that it is part of his natural share of the salvage. I have kept back enough to pay for a new suit (which I am now wearing) and one big bust

before I sail next week as deck steward on an Aberdeen liner.

threatens

Well, it was a great trip. We all got something out of it. You have got an adventure and incidentally done a big thing, and I have spent a month of absolute happiness in the society of men who regarded me neither as an object of pity nor as a monster of depravity, but were content to let me go my own way as a man who prefers to live his own life and be asked no questions. .. Your offer to set me on my legs again and make me a respectable member of society is friendly and, I suppose, natural; but it a happy episode with a sad ending. I'm not cut out for conventionality, and (pace your kind references to my "sterling merit and latent force of character ") I am not of the stuff that successful men are made of. I have only done two big things in my life. One was getting elected to Pop at Eton, the other was helping you to bring the old Orinoco home. I think I'll rest on my laurels now. I suppose I was born a rotter, and if you were to endeavour to raise me to your giddy heights I should only fall down again, and the bump at the bottom might hurt. I am safer where I am: the beauty of lying on the floor is that you can't fall off.

Well, chin, chin! If I may be permitted to gush for a moment, I should like to tell you that you are a good sort. -Yours ever,

LIONEL ALLERTON.

No. III.

No. 4 TEAK ST., LIMEHOUSE.

DEAR SIR, -I beg to acknowledge with thanks your cheque for share of salvage. It was far more than I expected, and the Admty Cts have certainly done well by us. At the best, I had hoped for sufficnt to rig out the nippers with boots and duds for the winter and give the missis a week or two off the laundry work. We have all been fair barmy the last few days. Square meals and a big fire, and you can't hear yourslf talk for the squeaking of the new boots. We are settling down a bit now, and I have put the rest of the money in the bank and told the old woman she is to burn her wash-tubs. Catch her: I dnt think! With my new clothes I have obtd a berth as Chief on board s.s. Batavia, of the Imperial Line, and sail on 21st inst. The engines are (several lines of hopeless technicalities omitted). It was a lucky day for me when I struck the Orinoco, and luckier when Angus doctored my grog.

On returning from voyage will take the libty of calling on you in London at the address you gave.-Yrs. respectfly,

JAS. WALSH,

(Chief Engineer, s.s. Batavia).

Postscript. (In a larger and less
educated hand.)

Mr MARRABLE, DEAR SIR,The children and me begs to thank you for all your kindness to father. Father he is very greatful himself, but

On a bright morning in April Hughie emerged from the offices of Messrs Slocum, Spink, and Slocum, Solicitors, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and made for the Strand.

Like most men who have been abroad for a long time, he trod the streets of London with an oddly mingled sensation of familiarity and strangeness. At one moment he felt that he had been living in London for years, at another he felt that he was exploring a new city. The Strand itself, save for the old congested stretch in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, was almost unrecognisable. Gone for ever were the various landmarks of his youth, such as the Old Gaiety and the Lowther Arcade. Holywell Street and Wych Street, with their delectable environs, had vanished like a bad but interesting dream, leaving room for a broad and stately thoroughfare, in the midst of which the churches of St Mary and St Clement Danes split the traffic like boulders in a Highland spate, and the

Law Courts acquired an unfamiliar prominence. A new fairway of uncanny width and straightness clove its course to Holborn, blocked at its mouth by a dismal patch of excavated territory resembling nothing so much as what Scotsmen term a "free coup,' and proclaiming to all and sundry, by means of a gigantic notice - board, that This Site was To Let as a Whole.

The traffic had developed too. There were countless motorbuses, which shook the earth and smelt to heaven; and taxi- cabs, which skipped like rams and quacked like ducks.

But after all, though landmarks change their bearings and banks be washed away, the stream flows on unchanged. The people were the same, and Hughie felt comforted. The smell of asphalt was the same, and he felt uplifted. And when he beheld the torrents of traffic that converge on the Wellington Street crossing arrest their courses seriatim and pile themselves up in a manner that would have

done credit to the waters of Jordan, all at the bidding of an imperturbable figure in a blue uniform, he felt that he was indeed home once more. Presently he hailed a taxicab, and whizzed along, exulting like a child with a new toy, to a railway station, where John Alexander Goble, having previously superintended the placing of his master's luggage in the train (with a maximum of precaution on his part and a minimum of profit on the porter's), was waiting to see him off.

Hughie dismissed his retainer to take charge of his newlyacquired flat until his return, and having secured his seat, followed his invariable custom and went forward to view the engine. He noted with interest that compound locomotives seemed to have made little or no progress in the country's favour, but that the prejudice against high-pitched boilers and six - coupled wheels had disappeared.

He then made his way to the refreshment room - where alone, he noted, Time's devastating hand appeared to have stood still-and having lunched frugally off something from under a glass dome which the divinity behind the counter, in response to a respectful inquiry, brusquely described as "fourpence," together with as much bitter beer as remained after the same damosel had slapped its containing vessel playfully down upon the fingers of a pimply but humorous youth who was endeavouring to tempt the appetites of

two wizened sardines, exposed for sale upon a piece of toast, with a hard-boiled egg from a neighbouring plate, returned to his seat in the train; where he was duly locked in by a porter, who displayed an amount of cheerful gratitude for sixpence that an American baggage-man would have considered excessive at a dollar. Here, with a rug, pipe, and a quantity of illustrated papers, most of which had come to birth since he had left England, and all of which appeared to depend for their livelihood on the exploitation of the lighter lyric drama, Hughie settled himself for a comfortable run along along the Thames Valley.

This done, he took two letters from his pocket. One had been opened already. It was an obviously feminine production, and said:

MANORS, Monday. DEAR HUGHIE, We are all thrilled to hear that you are home at last. You must come down here at once and be our guest until you have looked round, and then you can renew all our acquaintances at one go. There are a lot of nice people with us just now, so come ! You will be feeling lonely, poor thing, landing in this country after so many years, and of course you will miss poor Mr Marrable sadly. I suppose you have heard all about his death from the lawyers by this time, or perhaps you saw it in the papers two years ago.

Mr D'Arcy is here; also Joan, of course. My husband,

too, wants to have the pleasure of entertaining you that is, if you are prepared not to shoot him on sight! I don't think, though, that I shall be able to command your regretful affections any more. One look at me will be sufficient for you. Alas, I have two chins and three babies!

However, come down on Saturday, and you can size us all up. I suppose you know that Mr Marrable asked us to take Manors and look after Joan until you or he came home again; so you won't play the heavy landlord and evict us on the spot, will you ?—Yours

ever,

MILDRED LEROY.

Hughie put this epistle away with a slightly sentimental sigh. It did not seem so very long since he had been organising May Week festivities in Miss Mildred Freshwater's honour. Now-two chins and three babies! Eheu, fugaces!

The other letter had not yet been opened, and Hughie broke the seal. The envelope looked blue and legal, and its contents consisted of several pages of Jimmy Marrable's stiff upright handwriting. The date was nearly three years old.

I am leaving England again, -it began,—next week, and I doubt very much if I shall ever come back. It is not in the breed to die in bed of something stuffy. The only tie that keeps me here is Joey, and she is too much occupied at present in collecting scalps to pay much attention to the old ruin who brought her up. In

VOL. CLXXXVI.-NO. MCXXVI.

wore

about four years' time she may be fit to live with again: at present she is not; and I refuse point-blank for the time being to play second fiddle to any young cub who ever magenta socks and a pleated shirt. I think it quite time that you came home and took her in hand. Indeed, if you don't appear on the scene within two years, I have given instructions that you are to be ferreted out and asked to do So. When you do return you will receive this letter, in which I am going to set down the manner in which I wish my estate to be administered on Joey's behalf if I don't come back.

In the first place, I must tell you that Manors goes to you by entail, but that all the rest is Joey's, and you will be her sole trustee and guardian. Lance is of age, and independent, and I have disposed of things in such a way that he can't possibly interfere with the management of Joey's affairs. Secondly, I want to tell you something about the children themselves.

I am not their father, though I very nearly was, and though every old shrew in the neighbourhood thinks I am. Their mother was the most beautiful and lovable girl I have ever known, and the only woman in the world I ever cared a rap for. Ours was a boy-and-girl idyll, though I was ten years her senior. I had known her ever since I could carry her on my back, and it was always a sort of understood thing between us that we

were to

R