lay for dollars or doughnuts!"

"The point seems well taken," remarked the Bishop meditatively. "It's
certainly never struck me in that light before; but if you think--"

"I think," said the old lady decidedly, "that it's lucky for you that
there are no whales in Blanford!"

Miss Matilda threw down her cards.

"If I'm to be called a gambler under my own brother's roof," she said,
"I shall refuse to play. Besides I've a headache." And she rose
majestically from the table.

"But, my dear," began the Bishop meekly, "if we cannot find a fourth
hand--"

"If Miss Banborough doesn't feel up to playing," came the sweet tones of
Violet's voice, "I'll be delighted to take her place." And a moment
later she was ensconced at the table.

The Bishop's sister retired to a corner with the largest and most
aggressive volume of sermons she could find, and sniffed loudly at
intervals all the evening. And when at ten o'clock, in response to the
summons of an impressive functionary clad in black and bearing a wand
surmounted by a silver cross, the little party filed out to evening
devotions in the chapel, Miss Matilda gathered her skirts around her as
if she feared contagion.

"I'm afraid of that old cat," Mrs. Mackintosh confided to Violet, when
they had reached the haven of their apartments. "I'm sure she suspects
us already; and if we're not careful, she'll find us out."

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH THE ENEMY ARRIVES.

"I say, boss," remarked the tramp, as he paused for a moment in the
process of stuffing himself to repletion with cold game-pie, "this is a
rum trip, and no mistake."

"What's that got to do with you?" retorted Marchmont sharply,
appropriating the remaining fragments of the pasty to his own use.

The two men were seated in the shady angle of a ruined buttress, a
portion of a stately abbey, which in pre-Norman days had flourished at a
spot some half-dozen miles from the site of Blanford.

"Well," said the tramp, "if this ain't a wild-goose chase I dunno what
you calls it. Here you've gone an' took me away from my happy home, an'
brought me across the ragin' Atlantic, an' dumped me in a moth-eaten
little village where there ain't nothin' fit to drink, all because I
happened to chum with a Bishop."

"You seem to forget," said Marchmont, "that it was you who came to me,
offering to sell your friends and their secrets for a sufficient
remuneration."

"So I did," said the tramp; "but it was revenge, that's