long, heavily sealed envelope that
lay at Rallywood's elbow. 'Selpdorf, I see, already has his finger upon
you.'

Rallywood broke the great seals, and, having read, he tossed the paper
into the other's hands.

'He wishes to see me at 9.30. What can he want with me?' he asked.

'Probably he has heard you intend to cut the service. It appears to me,
Rallywood, that your chance has come out to meet you.'

'How could he have heard that I meant to go? And what can it matter to
any one if I do?' went on Rallywood incredulously.

Counsellor shook his head, but made no other reply.

'A lieutenant of the Frontier Cavalry,' resumed Rallywood, 'is merely a
superior make of excise officer!'

'You will be something more or something else before 10, I expect. As
for what he wants with you, that is for you to find out--if you can.'

'It is to be hoped he may feel moved to let me have my arrears of pay,'
said Rallywood, relapsing into his usual tone of indifference; 'that is
the chief consideration with us on the frontier just now.'

'He probably will if it suits him--or rather perhaps if you suit him.
Come over and dine with me presently at the Continental. There's
generally a decent dinner to be had there.'

John Rallywood, one of the old Lincolnshire Rallywoods, had been born to
a fortune, and moreover with an immense capacity for enjoying it after a
wholesome fashion. Queens Fain had fallen to him while still an infant
upon the death of a great-uncle, and with the old place were connected
all those hundred untranslatable ties and associations which go to make
up a boy's dreams. He was a man of suppressed, perhaps half unconscious,
but nevertheless deep-rooted enthusiasms; hence when the blow fell
which deprived him not only of his inheritance, but also cut short the
life of his mother, the unexpected, almost intolerable anguish he
silently endured had left a deep, defacing scar upon his personality.

Up to twenty-two the record of his life, if not striking, had been clean
and manly. He had passed through Sandhurst, and joined a dragoon
regiment for something over a year, when an older branch of the family,
supposed for a quarter of a century to be extinct, suddenly presented
itself very much alive in the person of a middle-aged, middle-class
American. Within three months the man's claim was substantiated, and
estate, fortune, position, and home--as far as John Rallywood was
concerned--had melted into thin air.

During