id you see all this?" inquired Rachel, whose voice was very
quiet, but her hazel eyes alight with a deeper interest than the story
warranted.

"At the Packhorse on the York Road. I came that way round for the sake
of the surface and the exercise."

"And did you see the check?"

"No, I only stopped for a moment, to find out what the excitement was
about; but the fellow I can see now. You never set eyes on such a
pirate--gloriously drunk and bearded to the belt. I didn't stop, because
he was lacing into everybody with a cushion, and the local loafers
seemed to like it."

"What a joke!" cried Sybil Venables.

"There is no accounting for taste," remarked her sapient sister.

"And he was belaboring them with a cushion, did you say?" added Rachel,
with the slightest emphasis upon the noun.

"Well, it looked like one to me," replied Langholm, "but, on second
thoughts, it was more like a bolster in shape; and now I know what it
was! It has just dawned on me. It looked like a bolster done up in a
blanket; but it was the swag that the tramps carry in Australia, with
all their earthly goods rolled up in their bedding; and the fellow was
an Australian swagsman, that's what he was!"

"Swagman," corrected Rachel, instinctively. "And pray what color was the
blanket?" she made haste to add.

"Faded blue."

And, again from sheer force of instinct, Rachel gave a nod.

"Were you ever out there, Mrs. Steel?" inquired Langholm, carelessly. "I
never was, but the sort of thing has been done to death in books, and I
only wonder I didn't recognize it at once. Well, it was the last type
one thought to meet with in broad daylight on an English country road!"

Had Langholm realized that he had put a question which he had no
business to put? Had he convicted himself of a direct though
unpremeditated attempt to probe the mystery of his hostess's
antecedents, and were his subsequent observations designed to unsay
that question in effect? If so, there was no such delicacy in the elder
Miss Venables, who became quite animated at the sudden change in
Rachel's face, and at her own perception of the cause.

"Have you been to Australia, Mrs. Steel?" repeated Vera, looking Rachel
full in the eyes; and she added slyly, "I believe you have!"

There was a moment's pause, and then a crisp step rang upon the marble,
as Mr. Steel emerged from his study.

"Australia, my dear Miss Venables," said he, "is the one country that
neither my wife nor I