ward from
the doorstep.

"Hardy!"

He knew the voice, but it was hard to recognise the man. A thick black
beard, a face that might have been tanned with bark, trousers tucked
into high boots, and tightened with a belt like a horse-girth, an old
Norfolk jacket stained with travel and the chase, a canvas shirt laced
with a red cord and tassels, and a plate-like hat of grey felt flapping
about his ears, made Hardy look something like a cowboy or a bandit. So
singular was the apparition that had plucked Ted back from the abyss,
that the Furies and the infernal phantoms vanished into smoke before it.
It brought with it a breath of Atlantic seas and of winds from the far
West.

"You young rascal! so it's you, is it? I didn't know you from Satan,
till I saw you turn round after flattening your nose against
what's-his-name's plate-glass. I wish I were in your shoes."

"Do you?" said Ted, with a grimace. "H'm. Why?"

"Because your whole expression suggests--partridges!"

"Does it? As it happens, I was thinking about a revolver."

"Potting burglars, eh? About all the sport you poor devils of Cockneys
will get on the First."

"Look here, Hardy, this is uncanny. Where did you spring from?"

"Straight from Euston this afternoon, from Queenstown yesterday morning,
before that from the other side of the Rockies."

"That accounts for your amazing get-up."

"Yes; and, by Jove! after a year in a log-hut on the wrong side of a
precipice, you're glad to get your feet on London pavement, and smell
London smells again. And look there, Ted! There isn't a lovelier sight
on God's earth than a well-dressed Englishwoman. Where are we going? How
about that revolver?"

Ted had forgotten all about it. Hardy's sane, open-air spirits had
infected him so far that he had let himself be dragged at a rapid pace
up the King's Road, where their progress attracted considerable
attention. As Hardy strode on, with his long swinging legs, he appeared
to be scattering the crowd before him.

"Never mind the thing now; it'll keep. How that girl stares! Does she
take us for banditti?"

"Not you, you puppy, in that coat and topper. No mistaking you for
anything but what you are--the sickly product of an effete civilisation.
Don't be frightened, you haven't gone off in the least; you're a little
pale, but prettier than you were, if anything."

"I say _you_ ought to be in the bosom of your family."

"I haven't got a family."

"Well, what brings