he
house.

'Oh, I'm not so very tired as all that comes to,' he said with a laugh.
'A long voyage is a restful thing, and I had time to get over the
fatigue of the----' he seemed to pause an instant for a word; then he
went on, 'the trouble, while I was on board the "Almirante Cochrane." Do
you know they were quite kind to me on board the "Almirante Cochrane"?'

The old lady's delicate face flushed angrily. 'The wretches, the wicked
wretches!' she said quite fiercely, and the thin fingers closed tightly
upon his and shook, agitating the lace ruffles at her wrists.

The Dictator laughed again. It seemed too strange to have all those wild
adventures quietly discussed in a Hampstead garden with a silver-haired
elderly lady in a cap.

'Oh, come,' he said, 'they weren't so bad; they weren't half bad,
really. Why, you know, they might have shot me out of hand. I think if I
had been in their place I should have shot out of hand, do you know,
aunt?'

'Oh, surely they would never have dared--you an Englishman?'

'I am a citizen of Gloria, aunt.'

'You who were so good to them.'

'Well, as to my being good to them, there are two to tell that tale. The
gentlemen of the Congress don't put a high price upon my goodness, I
fancy.' He laughed a little bitterly. 'I certainly meant to do them some
good, and I even thought I had succeeded. My dear aunt, people don't
always like being done good to. I remember that myself when I was a
small boy. I used to fret and fume at the things which were done for my
good; that was because I was a child. The crowd is always a child.'

They had come to the porch by this time, and had stopped short at the
threshold. The little porch was draped in flowers and foliage, and
looked very pretty.

'You were always a good child,' said the old lady affectionately.

Ericson looked down at her rather wistfully.

'Do you think I was?' he asked, and there was a tender irony in his
voice which made the playful question almost pathetic. 'If I had been a
good child I should have been content and had no roving disposition, and
have found my home and my world at Hampstead, instead of straying off
into another hemisphere, only to be sent back at last like a bad penny.'

'So you would,' said the old lady, very softly, more as if she were
speaking to herself than to him. 'So you would if----'

She did not finish her sentence. But her nephew, who knew and
understood, repeated the last word.

'If,' he said