a nice piece of butter you've got
there, mistress. Lord! it's strange I never missed all them things."

"Bring your chair to the table," said Marie, "and begin. You are
hungry--yes?"

"Hungry ain't quite the word."

"You will have some mutton--yes? And Mr. Durnovo, where was he?"

Joseph bent over his plate, with elbows well out, wielding his knife and
fork with a more obvious sense of enjoyment than usually obtains in the
politer circles.

"Mr. Durnovo," he said, with one quick glance towards her. "Oh, he was
just behind Mr. Oscard. And he follows 'im, and we all shake hands just
as if we was meeting in the Row, except that most of our hands was a bit
grimy and sticky-like with blood and grease off'n the cartridges."

"And," said Marie, in an indirectly interrogative way, as she helped him
to a piece of sweet potato, "you were glad to see them, Mr. Oscard and
Mr. Durnovo--yes?"

"Glad ain't quite the word," replied Joseph, with his mouth full.

"And they were not hurt or--ill?"

"Oh, no!" returned Joseph, with another quick glance. "They were all
right. But I don't like sitting here and eatin' while you don't take bit
or sup yourself. Won't you chip in, Mistress Marie? Come now, do."

With her deep, patient smile she obeyed him, eating little and
carelessly, like a woman in some distress.

"When will they come down to Loango?" she asked suddenly, without
looking at him.

"Ah! that I can't tell you. We left quite in a hurry, as one may say,
with nothin' arranged. Truth is I think we all feared that the guv'nor
had got his route. He looked very like peggin' out, and that's the
truth. Howsomever, I hope for the best now."

Marie said nothing, merely contenting herself with attending to his
wants, which were numerous and frequent.

"That God-forsaken place, Msala," said Joseph presently, "has been
rather crumpled up by the enemy."

"They have destroyed it--yes?"

"That is so. You're right, they 'ave destroyed it."

Marie gave a quick little sigh--one of those sighs which the
worldly-wise recognise at once.

"You don't seem over-pleased," said Joseph.

"I was very happy there," she answered.

Joseph leant back in his chair, fingering reflectively his beer-glass.

"I'm afraid, mistress," he said half-shyly, "that your life can't have
been a very happy one. There's some folk that is like that--through no
fault of their own, too, so far as our mortal vision, so to speak, can
reckon it up."

"I have