xpecting your brother from the colonies."

Into this arrangement I entered without the slightest hesitation, for
we had funds enough to carry it out on a comfortable scale, and Raffles
placed a sufficient share at my disposal for the nonce. Moreover, I
for one was only too glad to seek fresh fields and pastures new--a
phrase which I determined to interpret literally in my choice of fresh
surroundings. I was tired of our submerged life in the poky little
flat, especially now that we had money enough for better things. I
myself of late had dark dealings with the receivers, with the result
that poor Lord Ernest Belville's successes were now indeed ours.
Subsequent complications had been the more galling on that account,
while the wanton way in which they had been created was the most
irritating reflection of all. But it had brought its own punishment
upon Raffles, and I fancied the lesson would prove salutary when we
again settled down.

"If ever we do, Bunny!" said he, as I took his hand and told him how I
was already looking forward to the time.

"But of course we will!" I cried, concealing the resentment at leaving
him which his tone and his appearance renewed in my breast.

"I'm not so sure of it," he said, gloomily. "I'm in somebody's
clutches, and I've got to get out of them first."

"I'll sit tight until you do."

"Well," he said, "if you don't see me in ten days you never will."

"Only ten days?" I echoed. "That's nothing at all."

"A lot may happen in ten days," replied Raffles, in the same depressing
tone, so very depressing in him; and with that he held out his hand a
second time, and dropped mine suddenly after as sudden a pressure for
farewell.

I left the flat in considerable dejection after all, unable to decide
whether Raffles was really ill, or only worried as I knew him to be.
And at the foot of the stairs the author of my dismissal, that
confounded Theobald, flung open his door and waylaid me.

"Are you going?" he demanded.

The traps in my hands proclaimed that I was, but I dropped them at his
feet to have it out with him then and there.

"Yes," I answered fiercely, "thanks to you!"

"Well, my good fellow," he said, his full-blooded face lightening and
softening at the same time, as though a load were off his mind, "it's
no pleasure to me to deprive any man of his billet, but you never were
a nurse, and you know that as well as I do."

I began to wonder what he meant, and how