rms, for beneath her aigrettes she is woman too.

MR. VERTIGO applies for the post of science master at the school, and,
having seen Late kill a man many years before and escape punishment,
gets it. Every time you see Vertigo's name you may expect trouble.

DICK BOOBITRAPP is a kidnapper and a confederate of Vertigo.

DR. SAUNDERSON is a kidnapper under the guise of a writer of
prescriptions.

In spite of all precautions, such as employing only detectives as
servants of the school, Guy is kidnapped. The Duchess and Joseph Late
hurry to Spain to seek him, not because they know him to be there, but
because Spain is a likely romantic country.

* * * * *

CHAPTER CCCXLVIII.

"Tell me the worst," said the Duchess in strong ringing tones, all the
mother coming out in her anguish.

But the reply came in unfamiliar tones.

Looking up, she observed that her usher had disappeared, and in his
place was the detested Vertigo.

_To be continued--but not here._]

* * * * *

AT THE GATES OF THE WEST.

SCENE--_The New York landing pier of the Ocean Palace Line, crowded with
passengers and their luggage from the R.M.S. "Gargantuan."_

TIME--_About five and a-half hours earlier than ours._

_Mr. Horace Rutherford Penfold (the last thing in novelists, surrounded
by New York pressmen)_: "Glad to see you, boys! Delighted to see you!
_What!_ Was I hiding from you behind my luggage? What an absolutely
absurd idea! The whole way across I've been eagerly looking forward to
meeting you gentlemen of the most go-ahead, most enlightened Press on
earth! Yes, it's my first visit to your great country. The dream of my
life is now realised. Yes, of course I'm rejoiced that my novel, _The
Love of a Hop-Picker_, has taken its place among the 'best sellers' on
this side. Yes, people are good enough to say I've broken quite new
ground in making the hop-fields the scene of a novel; the critics say my
word-pictures of the hop-poles are 'absolutely luscious'; and they
pronounce _Ozias_, the hop-picker, 'a giant of artistic creation.' Yes,
my novel is one of the twenty which in the last six months have been
called 'epoch-making' and have been said to 'stand quite alone in modern
fiction.' No doubt the hop-field will now be exploited by other writers,
until in time it will become as hackneyed as the desert.

"Yes, this is my first visit to your wonderful country. I am here to
sup