trick or Captain Cai had caught a glimpse--
just a glimpse and no more--of a print gown some fifty yards ahead,
where the hedge made an angle about a clump of trees. The small
entrance gate and the footbridge lay just beyond this angle.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Captain Cai.

"What's up?"

"Nothin'"--for the light apparition had vanished. "Besides, she'd be
wearin' black, o' course."

"I wish you'd talk more coherent," said Captain Tobias, stopping short
again and eyeing him. "I put it to you, now. Here I be, tumbled out
'pon a terminus platform in a country I've never set eyes on. As if
that wasn' enough, straightaway things start to happen so that I want to
hold my head. And as if _that_ wasn' enough, you work loose on the
jawin' tacks till steerage way there's none. I put it to you."

"I'm sorry, 'Bias," Cai assured him contritely as they moved on.
"Maybe I'm upset by the pleasure o' seein' ye here. Many a time I've
picter'd it, an'--I don't know if you've noticed, but these little
things never _do_ fall out just like a man expects."

"I've noticed it to-day, right enough," said Tobias with some emphasis.
But he was mollified, and indeed seemed on the point of adding a word
when of a sudden he came to yet another halt and eyed his friend more
reproachfully than ever--no, not reproachfully save by implication: with
bewilderment rather, and helpless surmise.

"_What?_" gasped Captain Tobias. "_Which?_"--and, with that, speech
failed him.

The pair had come to the footbridge and were in the act of crossing it,
when they became aware that the stream beneath them differed from all
streams in their experience. It was not rippling like other streams; it
was not murmuring; it was tinkling out a gay little operatic tune!

To be more precise, it was rendering the waltz-tune in "Faust," an opera
by the late M. Gounod. Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken knew nothing
of "Faust" or of its composer. But they could recognise a tune.

"_Which?_" repeated Tobias gasping, holding by the handrail of the
bridge. "You or me? Or both, perhaps?"

"Two glasses o' port wine only, 'Bias . . . and you _saw_ me at the
station. I'd run all the way too. . . . Besides, _you_ hear it."
Relief, of a sudden, broke over Captain Cai's face. "It's the box!" he
cried.

With that he was aware of the sound of a merry laugh behind him--a
feminine laugh, too, not less musical than the melody still tinkling at
his feet. He turned abo