o recoil. To
call a place dull is often a confession of dulness."

He laughed--still in that somewhat unnatural manner, as if desirous
of filling up time. He had spent the latter years of his life in doing
nothing else. The man's method was so different to what Jocelyn Gordon
had met with in Loango, where men were all in deadly earnest, pursuing
souls or wealth, that it struck her forcibly, and she remembered it long
after Meredith had forgotten its use.

"I have no idea," she continued, "how the place strikes the passing
traveller; he usually passes by on the other side; but I am afraid there
is nothing to arouse the smallest interest."

"But, Miss Gordon, I am not the passing traveller."

She looked up with a sudden interest.

"Indeed! I understood from Maurice that you were travelling down the
coast without any particular object."

"I have an object--estimable, if not quite original."

"Yes?"

"I want to make some money. I have never made any yet, so there is a
certain novelty in the thought which is pleasant."

She smiled with the faintest suspicion of incredulity.

"I know what you are thinking," he said; "that I am too neat and
tidy--too namby-pamby to do anything in this country. That my boots are
too narrow in the toe, my hair too short and my face too clean. I cannot
help it. It is the fault of the individual you saw outside--Joseph. He
insists on a strict observance of the social duties."

"We are rougher here," she answered.

"I left England," he explained, "in rather a hurry. I had no time to
buy uncomfortable boots, or anything like that. I know it was wrong.
The ordinary young man of society who goes morally to the dogs and
physically to the colonies always has an outfit. His friends buy him
an outfit, and certain enterprising haberdashers make a study of such
things. I came as I am."

While he was speaking she had been watching him--studying him more
closely than she had hitherto been able to do.

"I have heard of a Sir John Meredith," she said suddenly.

"My father."

He paused, drawing in his legs, and apparently studying the neat brown
boots of which there had been question.

"Should you meet him again," he went on, "it would not be advisable
to mention my name. He might not care to hear it. We have had a slight
difference of opinion. With me it is different. I am always glad to hear
about him. I have an immense respect for him."

She listened gravely, with a sympathy that did no