his hotel in a great northern town,
encountered an acquaintance he had no difficulty whatever in
recognizing.

It was Excalibur, jammed fast between two stationary tramcars--he had
not yet shaken down to town life--submitting to a painful but effective
process of extraction at the hands of a posse of policemen and tram
conductors, shrilly directed by a small but commanding girl of the
lodging-house-drudge variety.

When this enterprise had been brought to a successful conclusion and
the congested traffic moved on by the overheated policemen, Lord
Caversham crossed the street and tapped the damsel on the shoulder.

"Can you kindly inform me where the owner of that dog may be found?" he
inquired politely.

"Yas. Se'nty-one Pilgrim Street. But 'e won't sell him."

"Should I be likely to find him at home if I called now?"

"Yas. Bin in bed since the accident. Got a nasty arm."

"Perhaps you would not mind accompanying me back to Pilgrim Street in my
car?"

After that Mary Ellen's mind became an incoherent blur. A stately
limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was handed in by a footman and
Excalibur was stuffed in after her in installments. The grand gentleman
entered by the opposite door and sat down beside her; but Mary Ellen was
much too dazed to converse with him.

The arrival of the equipage in Pilgrim Street was the greatest moment of
Mary Ellen's life.

Meantime upstairs in the first-floor front the curate, lying in his
uncomfortable flock bed, was saying:--

"If you really mean it, sir--"

"I do mean it. If those two children had been burned to death unnoticed
I should never have forgiven myself, and the public would never have
forgiven the company."

"Well, sir, since you say that, you--well, you could do me a service.
Could you possibly use your influence to get me a billet--I'm not
asking for an incumbency; any old curacy would do--a billet I could
marry on?" He flushed scarlet. "I--we have been waiting a long time
now."

There was a long silence, and the curate wondered whether he had been
too mercenary in his request. Then Lord Caversham asked:--

"What are you getting at present?"

"A hundred and twenty a year."

This was about two thirds of the salary Lord Caversham paid his
chauffeur. He asked another question in his curious, abrupt staccato
manner:--

"How much do you want?"

"We could make both ends meet on two hundred; but another fifty would
enable me to make her a lot more comfortabl