round a bend in the road. Then he turned and
came back into the room with the buoyant air of a man whose affairs are
prospering.

He smiled genially to himself as he gathered from the table in one
capacious hand all the pieces of bread his beloved niece had broken
up, and advanced again to the open window. Waiting here till one of the
dingy gulls moving aimlessly about was headed toward him, he tossed out
a fragment. The bird dashed at it with a scream, and on the instant the
whole squawking flock were on wing. He suffered the hubbub to proceed
unappeased for a little while he kept a watchful though furtive eye
on that balcony to the left, below. Unhappily he could not get out far
enough to see whether the inner curtains of its window were drawn. He
threw another bit of bread, and then looked at his watch. It was a few
minutes past nine. Surely people travelling to see scenery would be up
by this hour.

The strategy of issuing just enough bread to keep the feathered
concourse in motion commended itself to his mind. As a precautionary
measure, he took all the rolls remaining on the table, and put them in
the drawer of a desk by the window. It even occurred to him to ring for
more bread, but upon consideration that seemed too daring. The waiter
would be sufficiently surprised at the party's appetites as it was.

Half an hour later, his plan of campaign suddenly yielded a victory.
Lady Cressage appeared on her balcony, clad in some charming sort of
morning gown, and bareheaded. She had nothing in her hands, and seemed
indifferent to the birds, but when Thorpe flung forth a handful of
fragments into the centre of their whirling flock, she looked up at him.
It was the anxious instant, and he ventured upon what he hoped was a
decorous compromise between a bow and a look of recognition.

She was in no haste to answer either. He could see rather than hear
that she said something to her invisible companion within, the while she
glanced serenely in the general direction of his balcony. It seemed to
him that the answer to her remark, whatever it was, must have exerted
a direct influence upon his destiny, for Lady Cressage all at once
focussed her vague regard upon him, and nodded with a reasonably
gracious smile.

"It's wonderful luck to find you here," he called down to her. Having
played their part, he wished now that the birds were at Jericho. Their
obstreperous racket made conversation very difficult. Apparently she
made