y on a camp-stool
in the alley-way, and the bedroom steward wondered what on earth he
would do when the officers came along for cabin inspection.

The night before they touched at Naples Marcella and Louis arranged what
she called a "ploy." They would go ashore together and spend the day at
Pompeii. He had been there before, but he remembered little of it
because he had been with a party who had hired a car, taken a luncheon
basket and several bottles of whisky and left him asleep in the car
while they explored the dead towns.

"It seems an insult to the past--going there and getting drunk on their
tombs," he said musingly. "But you and I will have a great day. In a
Roman town, Marcella--there's something very Roman about you--you're
like the mother of the Gracchi. I happen to know all about the mother of
the Gracchi because it came in my Latin translation at Matric, and I
had such a devil of a job with it that I never forgot it. That's the
only bit of Roman history that's stuck to me, just as 'Julius Caesar' is
the only bit of Shakespeare I know because we did scenes from it for a
school concert once."

During the afternoon the young schoolmaster came along with "The Last
Days of Pompeii" in his hands.

"He's going to suggest coming with us to-morrow," said Louis, who
laughed at him every time he saw him. "And he's going to read us bits of
local colour. I can see it glinting in his eye. Let's look very busy."

"What can we do?" asked Marcella with a giggle. He initiated her into
the mysteries of "Noughts and Crosses" and they sat with heads bent low
over the paper as the schoolmaster came along.

"I have been tracing the course of the fugitives in Lytton's immortal
work," he began with a cough. "It would greatly add to the interest of
visitors to Pompeii if they could follow it to-morrow, so I am giving a
little lecture on it in the saloon to anyone who cares--"

"Thanks," said Louis shortly. With a sigh the schoolmaster passed on,
and, sitting down with his back against the capstan, read studiously.

"Don't let's go with him if he asks us," whispered Marcella. "Let's be
alone."

"Of course--he's a bore," whispered Louis. "I wouldn't lose this day at
Pompeii for a shipload of footling schoolmasters."

Very early next morning he wakened her by tapping on her cabin door. She
had heard him tossing about in the night and was not surprised that he
looked tired and rather haggard. But she forgot to ask him what wa