ondoner, and professed great
interest in literature, having a brother a news agent. We had some beer
together, when _Aliens_ had been safely bestowed. He was getting his
leave soon, he said, and I informed him I hoped to get mine in a month
or so. We drank to our three years' active service and to our safe trip
home. He was much impressed by this coinc_i_dence, as he called it, and
begged me, if I happened down Deptford way at all, to call and see him
over his brother's shop. I asked him if he knew a certain old book-store
in Deptford, where I had once gotten a Bandello's _Novelle_ for four
shillings, and he said he knew it well. But I think he only said this to
please an obvious bibliomaniac. We parted with mutual good wishes, and I
went back to the ship.

And so I send it to you, trusting to my good fortune to get it through.
It may never reach you, and I shall have had my labour in vain. It may
be, also, that ere it see the light I shall have gone away myself, an
aggrieved participant in one of the trivial disasters of the sea-affair.
But whatever betide, I shall have had my shot at the alluring yet
ineluctable problem of human folly.

WILLIAM MCFEE.

Port Said, Egypt, April 14, 1917.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE vii

CHAP.

I. THE "SCALDINO" 3

II. HIS CHILDREN 16

III. A LETTER FROM WIGBOROUGH 28

IV. MISS FRAENKEL 41

V. HE COMES 56

VI. HE BEGINS HIS TALE 70

VII. DIAPORESIS 105

VIII. HE CONTINUES HIS TALE 115

IX. WE AWAIT DEVELOPMENTS 168

X. ANOTHER LETTER FROM WIGBOROUGH 279

XI. MR. CARVILLE SEES THREE GREEN
LIGHTS 296

XII. THE VISION FROM THE KILLS 327

XIII. MISCELLANY 352

XIV. DISCUSSION 374

XV. CONCLUSION 398

ALIENS

CHAPTER I

THE "SCALDINO"

Long before any of us three had seen him we had become aware of his
existence, and our brains were continually busy about him. His
appearance, his age, his gait, his history, his voice, even his ultimate
destiny, we conjectured over and ove