aren't
the least interested in, the net result is called fame, reputation, or
notoriety, according to the taste and fancy of the speller my lord.'

'I know that as well as you do. Give me credit for a little gumption.'

'Be hanged if I do!'

'Be hanged, then; you probably will be,--for a spy, by excited Turks.

Heigh-ho! I'm weary, dead weary, and virtue has gone out of me.' Dick
dropped into a chair, and was fast asleep in a minute.

'That's a bad sign,' said the Nilghai, in an undertone.

Torpenhow picked the pipe from the waistcoat where it was beginning to
burn, and put a pillow behind the head. 'We can't help; we can't help,'
he said. 'It's a good ugly sort of old cocoanut, and I'm fond of it.
There's the scar of the wipe he got when he was cut over in the square.'

'Shouldn't wonder if that has made him a trifle mad.'

'I should. He's a most businesslike madman.'

Then Dick began to snore furiously.

'Oh, here, no affection can stand this sort of thing. Wake up, Dick, and
go and sleep somewhere else, if you intend to make a noise about it.'

'When a cat has been out on the tiles all night,' said the Nilghai, in
his beard, 'I notice that she usually sleeps all day. This is natural
history.'

Dick staggered away rubbing his eyes and yawning. In the night-watches
he was overtaken with an idea, so simple and so luminous that he
wondered he had never conceived it before. It was full of craft. He
would seek Maisie on a week-day,--would suggest an excursion, and would
take her by train to Fort Keeling, over the very ground that they two
had trodden together ten years ago.

'As a general rule,' he explained to his chin-lathered reflection in the
morning, 'it isn't safe to cross an old trail twice. Things remind one
of things, and a cold wind gets up, and you feel said; but this is an
exception to every rule that ever was. I'll go to Maisie at once.'

Fortunately, the red-haired girl was out shopping when he arrived, and
Maisie in a paint-spattered blouse was warring with her canvas. She was
not pleased to see him; for week-day visits were a stretch of the bond;
and it needed all his courage to explain his errand.

'I know you've been working too hard,' he concluded, with an air of
authority. 'If you do that, you'll break down. You had much better
come.'

'Where?' said Maisie, wearily. She had been standing before her easel
too long, and was very tired.

'Anywhere you please. We'll take a train to-morr