ttempt to participate in their mirth was rather
forced.

When the story was done, Miss Maitland rose from her seat at her
father's feet, and, putting a hand on each of his shoulders--

"You dear, delightful old fibber!" she remarked. "I don't believe you
dreamed that at all. You couldn't." Then she wheeled round on me. "Now
tell me, Mr. Sutgrove, didn't that dream of father's really happen to
you last night?"

What course was open to me but confession? I admitted the truth of the
story, and the Colonel was so choked with merriment, that I feared lest
he should be stricken with apoplexy.

"The cream of the joke," he explained, when he recovered his powers of
speech, "was that neither Winter nor Sutgrove had the slightest idea
that I was foxing. I intended to inform them directly we were clear of
the Pirate; but when I heard them discussing the matter, and determining
to keep silence out of tenderness for my reputation, I could not resist
keeping up the joke."

"I should think it was their own reputations they were thinking about,"
said his daughter. "To submit so tamely to one man is not a very heroic
proceeding."

I heard Mannering chuckle, and I felt mad. But I fancy it was not
Mannering's amusement, but my own consciousness of the truth of the
criticism that galled.

Colonel Maitland came to my rescue. "I thought they were very sensible,"
he said. "Even a cripple with a gun is better than six sound Tommies
unarmed."

"Sensible--yes," she replied scornfully. "But there are times when one
prefers a little less sense, and a little more--shall we say action. I
am sure you would not have obeyed so tamely?" she continued, turning to
Mannering.

He smiled, and I felt as if it would give me exquisite pleasure to catch
him by the throat, and twist the smile out of his dark, handsome face.

"Really, Miss Maitland," he replied, "you flatter me. You should not be
too hard on Sutgrove. I am sure that it was only the full comprehension
of his own helplessness which prevented him making a fight of it. What
could he have done?"

"Oh, a man should always know what to do!" she answered petulantly. "Has
any one ever tried to hold you up?"

"Well, yes," he answered. "Once when I was out in the west of the
States, some of the regulation bands tried the game on a train in which
I was travelling. But then, you see, the conductor in the railway-car in
which I happened to be seated had a six-shooter. So had I. The other
passe