hin an hour
of midnight, and thence his flight was an owl's.

The social chill which surrounded Paul's household had grown arctic, and
Madge, Mrs. Hampton, and Phyllis had all been bundled away to Ostend,
in a sunken identity. The house in which the cause of disturbance had
so long been unreasonably happy was closed. The servants had been
dismissed, and a commissionaire and his wife lived in the basement. Paul
had taken lodgings at a Fleet Street hostelry, and thither in the dead
of night came Wilder and other night-birds, to the much disturbance of
the porter at the grille. It chanced one night that Wilder came with
a declaration that he had found his soul's salvation through beer. His
stream of life should flow, so he declared, through Burton-on-Trent. He
was done with noxious liquids, and proposed to bathe his spirit clear
in the vats of Bass and Allsopp. Wilder was-not outside the sphere of
reformation, and Guinness would share with the others the credit of his
uprising. He drank a tankard or two of each and either as an evidence of
good faith, and he left an hour after midnight, more sober than Paul had
ever known him at such a time. He had talked a heap of brilliant sense
and nonsense, and had borrowed two half crowns. Paul went to bed
almost regretting the loss of even this mad companionship, and tossed,
half-dozing, on a shifting sea of troubles. Suddenly, when he had lost
all consciousness of time and place, there came a thundering summons
at his door, and in answer to his startled call there came in a huge
policeman in a greatcoat and a helmet, and behind him a quaking waiter
with a candle in a glass funnel. The officer appealed to a piece of
paper he carried in his hand.

'Paul Armstrong,' he read, with a brogue as wide as the ocean. 'Is that
you?'

'That is my name,' said Paul.

'Then ye're wanted,' said the official.

'Wanted? Where?'

'At Bow Street,'the official answered stolidly.

Paul rolled round to consult his watch. It indicated three o'clock
within a minute or so.

'What on earth am I wanted at Bow Street for?' he asked in great
bewilderment.

'Party of the name of Wilder,' said the officer, referring once more to
his paper. 'Says you're his first cousin, and that you'll bail him out.'

'Wilder? First cousin?' His mind was fogged with broken sleep. 'Oh, that
fellow! What has he been doing?'

The man in uniform consulted his paper again, and read out:

'Dhrunk and dishortherly.'

'A