ch clattered up Sir Rupert Landale's
avenue and deposited upon his porch a tattered mariner who announced
himself, in melancholy tones that would have befitted the ghost no
doubt many took him for, as the rightful Sir Adrian, erroneously
supposed defunct, I confess that it required a little persuasion to
make me recognise my long-lost brother--and yet there could be no
doubt of it. The missing heir had come to his own again; the dead had
come back to life. Well, we killed the fatted calf, and all the rest
of it--but I need not inflict upon you the narrative of our
rejoicing."

"Faith, no," said Tanty, drily, "I can see it with half an eye."

"You know, too, I believe, the series of extraordinary adventures, or
misadventures, which had kept him roaming on the high seas while we at
home set up tablets to his memory and 'wore our blacks' as people here
call it, and cultivated a chastened resignation. There was a good deal
of correspondence going on at the time between Pulwick and Bunratty,
if I remember aright, and you heard all about Adrian's divers attempts
to land in England, about his fight with the King's men, his crack on
the head and final impressment. At least you heard as much as we could
gather ourselves. Adrian is not what one would call a garrulous person
at the best of times. It was really with the greatest difficulty that
we managed to extract enough out of him to piece together a coherent
tale."

"Well, well," quoth Tanty, with impatience, "you are glib enough for
two anyhow, my dear! All this does not tell me how Adrian came to live
on a lighthouse, and why you put him down as a lunatic."

"Not as a lunatic," corrected Rupert, gently, "merely as slightly
eccentric on certain points. Though, indeed, if you had seen him
during those first months after his return, I think even you with your
optimistic spirit would have feared, as we did, that he was falling
into melancholia. Thank heaven he is better now. But, dear me, what we
went through! I declare I expected every morning to be informed that
Sir Adrian's corpse had been found hanging from his bedpost or
discovered in a jelly at the bottom of the bluffs. And, indeed, when
at length he disappeared for three days, after he had been last
observed mooning along the coast, there was a terrible panic lest he
should have sought a congenial and soothing end in the embraces of
the quicksands.... It turned out, however, that he had merely strolled
over to Scarthe