tore the limp envelope, and read:--

"GRAND HOTEL ISOTTA, _Genova, Tuesday_.

"DEAR SIR,--Upon consideration I must return to my original
decision. I fear I shall have left Genoa before you receive this,
but do not trouble to give me any thanks. The balance of the
circular ticket is very much at your service.--Yours faithfully,

"R. E. WEEMS.

"--COSPATRIC, ESQ."

The little beast had done me brown.

It was getting on for eight o'clock then. I glanced at a time-table. He
was due to leave Marseille at 8.4. By Jove, if I could have trumped up
any charge that would have held water a minute I'd have had him
arrested by wire. Anything to delay him! I was just savage mad. And I
was as helpless as a figure-head.

I swung out into the Via Roma wondering what to do next. Common sense
said go and take up my berth on the American steamer, and quit crying
for the moon now that it had bounced out of reach again. But I was far
too wild to listen to any sane sober plan like that. I couldn't swim
out to Minorca, and I could not fly; but I told myself grimly that I
was going somehow, and if Weems had got there first and collared the
Recipe, he'd just have to hand over--or--well, it would be the worse
for Weems. I shouldn't buy lavender kid gloves to handle him with.

All that day I hunted about, trying to get a passage across to the
islands; needless to remark, without success. The mail steamers run
there from Valencia and Barcelona only, and though there are occasional
orange boats passing between Soller in North Mallorca and Marseille,
they aren't to be depended on. By a singular irony of fate, I did come
across an old white--painted barque which had just come out of Palma in
ballast; but her skipper only told what I knew full well in my own
heart, that I might very likely wait three years before I found a craft
going the other way.

There seemed nothing for it but to go like a sensible Christian by
train round the coast, and then across from one of the two Spanish
ports by the regular ramshackle mail steamer. And so I bowed to fate,
and converted the drab portmanteau and all its contents into the
compactest form. The lot didn't fetch much. By dint of tedious
haggling, I scraped together twenty-three lire thirty; and without
selling the clothes on my back, and one other item, which I had rather
sell the teeth out of my head than part with, I didn't see a
possibility of getting more by that sort o