ir Roderick! Glad to see you safe home, sir," said
Jephson. "Telegram just delivered at the Lodge for Mr. Collingwood."

"For me?" said Jimmy. "I've backed nothing to-day. Been too busy."

He tore upon the envelope, read the message, and after a pause handed
it to me, whistling softly. It had been handed in at the Docks
Station, Liverpool, and it ran--

"Tell O. that F. and I sail to-night New York S.S. _Emania_.

"Foe."

NIGHT THE TWELFTH.

THE "EMANIA".

I am going to spin the next stretch of this yarn--and maybe the next
after it--in my own way. You will wonder how I happened by certain
scraps of information: but you will understand before we come to the
end.

It comes mainly from later report, but partly from documents which I
have been too busy, of late, to sift. Here they are, all mixed: and
I choose one only out of the heap--and that a passage which doesn't
help the actual story much, though it may help the understanding of
it. It occurs in a letter of Foe's written at sea and posted from
New York--

"She had been reading a magazine, borrowed from the ship's
library, and when she left me, she left it lying beside her
deck-chair. The wind ruffled its pages and threatened to tear
them: so I picked the thing up, and was about to close it, and
to stow it behind her cushion, when a story-title caught my eye
and agreeably whetted my curiosity. It was 'The Head Hunter.'

"I don't care greatly for short stories. Fiction as a rule bores
me in inverse proportion to its length--which seems a paradox
and liable to be reduced to the absurd by any moderately expert
logician. Yet you will find it experimentally true of five
readers out of six. . . . Moreover the yarn had little or
nothing to do with real head-hunting--except in its preamble.
I soon glanced at the end, and had no further use for the story.

"But I turned my attention back to the preamble and reread it
twice. The fellow, an American, has a queer cocky irregular
style: but he can write when he chooses: and in one shot he so
fairly hit me between wind and water that I had to steal the
book, carry it down to my cabin and copy out the passage for
your benefit. . . . Yes, for yours: because it conveys something
I've been wanting you to understand about this chase of mine,
something I co