hout a receipt for the ten centimes. As a man I believe
implicitly that you paid the sum, as an official I am compelled to doubt
your word."

Who but a Frenchman could have been so exquisitely pompous over a penny?
I saw by Terry's face that he was far from considering the incident
closed; but he had too much true Irish tact to try and get us through by
storming.

"Let us consider," he began, "whether there is not some means of escape
from this difficulty."

But Dalmar-Kalm was in no mood to temporize, or keep silent while others
temporized. The lights of Breil showed that it was a town of comparative
importance; it was past eight o'clock; and no doubt His Highness's
temper was sharpened by a keen edge of hunger. That he--he should be
stopped by a fussy official figure-head almost within smell of food,
broke down the barrier of his self-restraint--never a formidable
rampart, as we had cause to know. In a few loud and vigorous sentences
he expressed a withering contempt for France, its institutions, its
customs, and especially its custom-houses.

"If you'd mix up the Prince's initials, as you do Mr. Barrymore's
sometimes, and call him Kalmar-Dalm, there'd be some excuse for it,"
Beechy Kidder murmured to the Countess.

"Hush, he'll hear!" implored the much-enduring lady, but there was small
danger that His Highness would hear any expostulations save his own.

The functionary's eye grew dark, and Terry frowned. Had the _douanier_
been insolent, my peppery Irishman would have been insolent too,
perhaps, in the hope of cowering the man by truculence more
swashbuckling than his own; but he had been as polite as his countrymen
proverbially are, if not goaded out of their suavity. "Look here,
Prince," said Terry, hanging onto his temper by a thread (for he also
was hungry), "suppose you leave this matter to me. If you'll take the
ladies to the best hotel in town, Moray and I will stop and see this
thing through. We'll follow when we can."

Dalmar-Kalm snapped at the suggestion; our passengers saw that it was
for the best, and yielded. As they moved away, a shadowy form hovered in
their wake. It was the little black dog of Airole.

The Marquis of Innisfallen's first quarrel with his brother had been
caused by Terry's youthful preference for an army instead of a
diplomatic career. Now, could his cantankerous relative have seen my
friend, he would once more have shaken his head over talents wasted. The
oily eloquence wh