In Direst Peril

ow and myself. We had to deal with the strangest creature, a thing alternately beast and gentleman, sensitive in every fib

s fingers tapping at his teeth, was pitiable and dreadful, but not so pitiable and dreadful as to see him grow suddenly conscious

n an exceptional linguist in his youth, and he was an exceptional linguist still. He was most companionable and least embarrassed with us when he was i

over the vessel's rail and

draw him out, and after having failed in all of them-"do y

that?"

cruel solitude you never ab

vivid manner. I had never known him so roused and interested

ge," I answered. "You would never have cared to do t

nd aspect of every person I have known. I have translated every line into every language of which I am master. I have hundreds of thousands of lines in my head-how can I tell how many? They are poor enough, I dare say, but I could talk every working day for weeks an

e, as if an invisible world had put a limit to the space he moved in; that was the jail-bird's gait, and the prison limits were about him again to his unconscious memory. Then, at other times he would assert himself with an effort only too visible. He would lift his head, throw o

ight?"

ed. "We shall lan

tion he would certainly have fallen to the deck if I had not put an arm about him. His poor body was all crate and basket, ribs and spine; and the wretched man's skeleton figure shook in my arms as if each sob were an explosion. He laid his head on my shoulder at last, and I

land," I said. "There is

t I had spoken unt

, in his foreign voice, broken wi

. He disengaged himself at last and shook me by the hand, and began his promenade again. Before we had exchanged another word we were slowing alongs

ed at once. Miss Rossano and Lady Rollinson were waiting to m

Fyffe," she said.

daughter?" s

n onlooker, who had known nothing of the story, would have guessed little from their

unhappy, about her. I knew that the power lay in her hands to make my life mainly cloud or mainly sunshine. That was quite settled in my own mind by this time, and my wife and I have laughed a thousand times and more about it. Yes; I knew scarcely anything about her, and yet I was prepared to fight in the assurance that she possessed every virtue and every grace of character which I have since proved in her. This is the folly of love; but it is at the sam

furiously jealous of him, and altogether dashed my happiness. She had spoken to me-ergo, she could speak. She had not spoke

ily, and Brunow and I walked up to the hotel side by side. We were met in the hall by a waiter who asked us if we would go to Lady Rollinson's sitting-room in half an hour, and then Brunow and I went to a private room of our own, and drank each a pint of

iss Rossano had thanked me in words and had not spoken to him, and he was probably reading the thing the other way about. But he was much more at home within himself than I was, and at any

arm-chair and his daughter leaned above him with a hand on either shoulder. The scene looked purely domestic, and if a stranger had seen it he would have discovered nothing unusual in it. At the moment at which I en

"I have tried to thank you often, but I have never succee

l herself, her eyes shone, her beautiful lips were apart, her color came and went, and it would have been evident to the dullest sight that she was deeply moved; but she showed no sign of having shed tears, and looked altogether br

man with the colorless face, the sunken eyes, the matted hair and beard-and was puzzled to identify him with the polished gentleman who sat before me. And yet, in spite of the disguise, the jail-bird was back again in as little time as it would take to snap your thumb and finger. The cloud

dear-" she said,

ndecided half-return t

d, as if searching in his own mind for th

ng Captain Fyffe

year's has left its mark upon me. I fail in words-sometimes, to tell you the whole truth, I fail in feelings. There are moments when I have not even the heart to be glad that I am

l Hinge. Without him we should have been nonplussed; with him everything fell

dly tell Miss Rossano that in fulfilling the commission we accepted at her hands we should have been delighted to encounter eit

count; "but my daughter and I enjoy

ut it the more I saw how little we had done, and how plai

des, will have a thousand things to say to each other with which nobody else will have a right to interfere."

l my life long, whether you disclaim them or not. And yo

and the other to myself. "I am poor in words," he said, with a shaking voice; "I am poor in everything. But b

lled line in his cheeks, which misery and solitude had bitten there, and rested in hi

, as if we were speaking in a churc

to have had no rival, to have brought back Miss Rossano's father unaided, and to have taken whatever gratitude was due for that service entirely to myself. As it turned out, I had done nothing. The origin

ccurred to me. When it came it brought as little comfort as the truth is apt to bring. I saw that my whole purpose had been to do something that should make me look no

longer time yet to digest it; but it had a wholesome eff

London papers. I attached no particular importance to the fact at the moment, but a few minutes later I passed him in the corridor and found him r

hurry for n

local man down here seems to be a smartish sort of fellow, and I was

man? What fa

"we are people of distinction, and under the circumstances our comings and goin

een useless to say a word to him. And yet I fairly boiled over when I saw the travesty of the whole adventure with which he had duped the Times. One would have supposed from the story with which he had primed the representative of that journal that we had run every conceivable kind of risk, and had, by our own courage and cunning, surmounted every obstacle the wit of man could compas

Brunow. All the exiled noblemen who live in Hatton Garden, and make London stand and deliver at the barrel-organ's mouth, all the dukes and counts who shave and teach dancing, and sell penny ices, and ke

could against the newspaper falling into the hands of Miss Rossano. We all travelled to London together at her request, and I had some difficulty in pers

lined to give it him. You can't expect," he went on, "to do a thing of this kind at this time of day and not have it talked abo

nk about it, so astonishingly like him, that I forbore to say another word, excep

at deal, and was evidently as far from under

and everybody there present seemed crazy with excitement. How, or by whom, our little party was singled out was beyond my power to guess. But we were recognized in a moment, and in another moment were swept asunder from each other amid such a polyglot babel of voices as I had never heard before. People were laughing and crying and cheering and fighting all at once, and I had a glimpse of the count in the arms of a score of mustachioed, sallow-featured men who were weeping and shouting, and hugging and kissing him and each other like a pack of lunatics inspired with the instinct of welcome. I was faring little better at the hands of the populace, though I cooled the enthusiasm of more than one patriot, I am afraid, a

ace. He installed himself without engagement or invitation as my body-servant, and I fo

the colonel's batman for three years, and I can valley a gentleman as well her

on the bed, and, motioning to me to be seated, k

to answer it, returning with a large visiting-card edged with a line of mourning. He presente

d that he came direct from Miss Rossano with a message. I

His cheeks and chin had been strange to the razor for a week; his linen was limp and discolored; and his clothes, which were of foreign cut, had once been shapely and fashionable, but were now seedy beyond belief. The hat he held in one hand was a monument of shabbiness; but his habitual stoop had the air of having been

e?" he said, with a m

y name," I

he enterprise in which he lost his liberty. I lose no moment in coming here to pay my homage to the disinterested valor which gave my compatriot his freedom, I am, sir," he bowed and extended his hands with a smiling humility-"I

d: "This brave and loyal gentleman is my father's

gaunt spectre who stood before me was flushed, and his head was in the air, as if

carrying such a recommendation was welcome. He held out a long, le

s a legend and an inspiration. Twenty years ago he was our leader-a spirit of the subtlest and most indomitable. A soul without fear, and of resource astonishingly varied. 'You have restored him to us, and before a month is

an opera, and his narrow chest swelled under the tight buttons of his ragged old frock-coat. Every English word he spoke was supplemented by an Italian vowel, so that his language, though it was perfectly fluent and correct, sounded quite

d by the Conte di Rossano to tell you that a meeting has been already arranged to welcome h

atriots I had seen in the crowd that morning. But when my visitor incidentally mention

e to the place of meeting, and so went his way wit