a hundred?"

"Don't be a fool, Ratman! I've nothing I can give you just now," said
the captain angrily.

Ratman put down his pen, and whistled a stave, drubbing his fingers on
the table. Then he took the pen again.

"A hundred, eh?" he repeated.

The captain ground his teeth in impotent fury.

"No. Fifty."

"Thanks very much. I'll make it seventy-five, if you don't mind."

Captain Oliphant, with black countenance, slowly counted the notes out
onto the table, while his friend with many flourishes wrote out the
receipt. Before signing it he counted the money.

"Quite right, perfectly right. Thanks very much, Teddy. Now let us go
out and see the sights. You forget it's years since I was in town."

"Tell me first," said the captain, going to the window, was turning his
back, "about that--you know--that affair in--"

"About your robbing the mess-funds?" supplied his friend cheerfully.
"Certainly, my dear boy. Quite a simple matter. Shortly after you
left, Deputy-Assistant something or other came with a long face. `This
is a bad job,' says he; `your friend Oliphant's left the accounts in an
awful mess. Doesn't look well at all. Where is he?' `Nonsense, my
dear Deputy-Assistant,' says I; `must be a mistake. Oliphant's a man of
his word. Besides, he's just come into a fortune. Bound to be right if
you look into it.' `Will you make it good if it's wrong?' asks he.
`Don't mind if I do,' says I, `within reason. He's a young family.'
`Only way of hushing it up. Either that or bringing him back between a
file of soldiers.' `You don't mean that?' says I. `What's the figure?'
`L750,' says he."

"Liar!" growled the captain, wheeling round. "It wasn't half that."

"They're bound to make something out of it--always happens. Well, as
you'd told me you'd got the pickings of a cool half million, I felt I
couldn't go wrong in covering you. So I came down with five hundred of
needful. Got them to promise to let the rest stand till I had done
myself the pleasure of a run over here just to remind you that they have
you on their mind. You've disappointed me, Teddy, my boy, but I won't
desert you. Don't say you've no friends. I'll stick by you, I rather
fancy."

The captain was probably able to form a pretty clear estimate how much
of this glib story was fact and how much fiction.

Whatever the proportion may have been, he had to acknowledge that this
friend of his held him in an uncomfortable grip, a