d not write at all.

"It'll have to do, anyway," he muttered, and again the pen flew: "I'm
not much of a hand at writing letters, as you know, but you must try
and read between the lines, and guess at all I would say were we
together ... All I will say to you when we meet again."

That last sentence was rather neat, Micky thought with pride, then a
wave of compunction swept through his heart as he remembered the
tragedy behind it all, and he finished the page soberly enough: "Ever
yours, Raymond Ashton."

"Damn him!" said Micky under his breath, as he blotted the signature;
then he took two ten-pound notes from a drawer in his desk, and,
enclosing them in the envelope, sealed and stamped it.

It was half-past one, but Micky climbed into his coat again. He locked
Ashton's letter into his desk, and, taking the one he had written,
went quietly down to the street.

The world was sleeping and deserted, and Micky's footsteps echoed
hollowly along the pavement.

"You're a fool, you know!" he told himself, with a sort of humour.
"You're a bally fool, my boy! It won't end here, you see if it does."

But he went on to the pillar-box at the street corner.

When he reached it he stood for a moment with the letter in his hand.

"You're a fool," he told himself again hardily. "Micky, my boy, you're
a bally idiot, interfering with what doesn't concern you--with what
doesn't concern you in the very least."

He looked up at the stars and thought of Esther Shepstone, of her eyes
and her wavering smile, and the soft note in her voice as she had
asked him--

"Are you always as kind to every one as you have been to me?"

No concern of his! It was every concern of his; he knew that he was
only living for the hours to pass before he saw her again. No concern
of his! when the greatest miracle of all the world had come to pass
during those last hours of the old year, inasmuch that Micky Mellowes,
heartwhole and a bachelor for thirty odd years, had been bowled over
by a girl without a shilling to her name--a girl who loved another
man, but a girl to whom Micky had without wishing it, without knowing
it, dedicated the rest of his life!

He was her champion for the future, some one to stand between her and
the callousness of the man of whom even now she was probably
thinking.

"No concern of mine!" said Micky to himself with fine scorn. "Why, of
course it is! Every concern of mine."

He squared his shoulders and dropped the enve