one time or another, passed through a similar crisis and knew exactly
what it meant. A purse, of course, could have been made up--Marny even
insisted on sharing his last hundred francs with him--and Mynheer would
have allowed the board-bill to run on indefinitely with or without an
addition to his collection, but the lad was not built along those lines.

"No--I go home and help mine fader once a leetle, den maybe I come
back, don't it?" was the way he put it.

The next morning, when the procession formed to escort him through the
Old Gate, every man answered to his name except Joplin--he had either
overslept himself or was taking an extra soak in his portable tub.

"Run, Tine, and call Mr. Joplin," cried Marny--"we'll go ahead. Tell
him to come to the dock."

Away clattered the sabots up the steep stairs, and away they scurried
down the bare corridor to Joplin's room. There Tine knocked. Hearing no
response she pushed open the door and looked in. The room was empty!
Then she noticed that the bed had not been slept in, nor had anything
on the washstand been used. Stepping in softly for some explanation of
the unusual occurrence--no such thing had ever happened in her
experience, not unless she had been notified in advance--her eye rested
on a letter addressed to Stebbins propped up in full view against a
book on Joplin's table. Catching it up as offering the only explanation
of his unaccountable disappearance, she raced downstairs and, crossing
the cobbles on a run, laid the letter in Stebbins's hand.

"For me, Tine?"

The girl nodded, her eyes on the painter's.

The painter broke the seal and his face grew serious. Then he beckoned
to Marny and read the contents aloud, the others crowding close:

Dear Stebbins:

Keep my things until I send for them. I take the night train for
Rotterdam. Tell Schonholz I'll join him there and go on with him to
Fizzenbad. Sorry to leave this way, but I could not bear to bid you all
good-by. Joplin.

III

That night the table was one prolonged uproar. The conspirators had
owned up frankly to their share of the villany, and were hard at work
concocting plans for its undoing. Marny was the one man in the group
that would not be pacified; nothing that either Pudfut, Stebbins or
Malone had said or could say changed his mind--and the discussion,
which had lasted all day, brought him no peace.

"Drove him out!--that's what you did, you bull-headed Englishman--you
and Malone an