d you that? How could you know--"

"It was not necessary to tell me. You said, '_We_ got you away'; but
I know it was you, Speed, because it was like you. Look at me! Am I
well enough to dress?"

He raised a haggard face to mine. "You know best," he said. "They
tore your coat off, and one of them ripped your riding-boot from top
to sole; but the blow Empress struck you is your only hurt, and she
all but missed you at that. Had she hit you fairly--but, oh, hell! Do
you want to get up?"

I said I would in a moment,... and that is all I remember that night,
all I remember clearly, though it seems to me that once I heard drums
beating in the distance; and perhaps I did.

Dawn was breaking when I awoke. Speed, partly dressed, lay beside me,
sleeping heavily. I looked around at the pretty boudoir where I lay,
at the silken curtains of the bed, at the clouds of cupids on the
painted ceiling, flying through a haze of vermilion flecked with
gold.

Raising one hand, I touched with tentative fingers my tightly bandaged
head, then turned over on my side.

There were my torn clothes, filthy and smeared with sawdust, flung
over a delicate, gilded chair; there sprawled my battered boots,
soiling the polished, inlaid floor; a candle lay in a pool of hardened
wax on a golden rococo table, and I saw where the smouldering wick had
blistered the glazed top. And this was her room! Vandalism
unspeakable! I turned on my snoring comrade.

"Idiot, get up!" I cried, hitting him feebly.

He was very angry when he found out why I had awakened him; perhaps
the sight of my bandaged head restrained him from violence.

"Look here," he said, "I've been up all night, and you might as well
know it. If you hit me again--" He hesitated, stared around, yawned,
and rubbed his eyes.

"You're right," he said, "I must get up."

He stumbled to the floor, bathed, grumbling all the while, and then,
to my surprise, walked over to a flat trunk which stood under the
window and which I recognized as mine.

"I'll borrow some underwear," he remarked, viciously.

"What's my trunk doing here?" I demanded.

"Madame de Vassart had them bring it."

"Had _who_ bring it?"

"Horan and McCadger--before they left."

"Before they left? Have they gone?"

"I forgot," he said, soberly; "you don't know what's been going
on."

He began to dress, raising his head now and then to gaze out across
the ocean towards Groix, where the cruiser once lay at anchor.

"