the table on the way out. Sutch stopped and
looked round the room. It was nearly empty. He glanced at his watch and
saw that the hour was eleven. Some plan of action must be decided upon
that night. It was not enough to hear Harry Feversham's story. There
still remained the question, what was Harry Feversham, disgraced and
ruined, now to do? How was he to re-create his life? How was the secret
of his disgrace to be most easily concealed?

"You cannot stay in London, hiding by day, slinking about by night," he
said with a shiver. "That's too like--" and he checked himself.
Feversham, however, completed the sentence.

"That's too like Wilmington," said he, quietly, recalling the story
which his father had told so many years ago, and which he had never
forgotten, even for a single day. "But Wilmington's end will not be
mine. Of that I can assure you. I shall not stay in London."

He spoke with an air of decision. He had indeed mapped out already the
plan of action concerning which Lieutenant Sutch was so disturbed.
Sutch, however, was occupied with his own thoughts.

"Who knows of the feathers? How many people?" he asked. "Give me their
names."

"Trench, Castleton, Willoughby," began Feversham.

"All three are in Egypt. Besides, for the credit of their regiment they
are likely to hold their tongues when they return. Who else?"

"Dermod Eustace and--and--Ethne."

"They will not speak."

"You, Durrance perhaps, and my father."

Sutch leaned back in his chair and stared.

"Your father! You wrote to him?"

"No; I went into Surrey and told him."

Again remorse for that occasion, recognised and not used, seized upon
Lieutenant Sutch.

"Why didn't I speak that night?" he said impotently. "A coward, and you
go quietly down to Surrey and confront your father with that story to
tell to him! You do not even write! You stand up and tell it to him face
to face! Harry, I reckon myself as good as another when it comes to
bravery, but for the life of me I could not have done that."

"It was not--pleasant," said Feversham, simply; and this was the only
description of the interview between father and son which was vouchsafed
to any one. But Lieutenant Sutch knew the father and knew the son. He
could guess at all which that one adjective implied. Harry Feversham
told the results of his journey into Surrey.

"My father continues my allowance. I shall need it, every penny of
it--otherwise I should have taken nothing. But I