The Thousandth Woman

above the throb of the liner's screws and the mighty pounding of the water against her plates. Then his assembling senses coupled the light in the cabin with his own clear recollection of havin

ing curtain, which he had taken to keeping drawn at night; and there on the settee, with the thinnest of cigarettes

can named Hilton Toye, and Cazalet a

I been talkin

ye, and broke into a smile th

cigarettes. "What did I say?" he asked, with an amused curio

ep behind his kindly smile. "I judge," said he, "you were dr

s a nightmare! I must have turned in too soon aft

en-dead!' and then you said, 'Dead-dead-Henry Craven

, shuddering. "I saw him

the morning," he said, "and now it's September eighteenth. Take a note of that, Mr.

t is." Cazalet was

great friend you

at all, dea

he's by way of being a friend of mine. I know a Henry Craven over i

ed Up

the man. Little

came, Hilton Toye was somber, subtle and demure. Cazalet, on the other hand, was of sanguine complexion and impetuous looks. He was tanned a rich bronze about the middle of the face, but it broke off across his forehead like the

ut it seemed a kind of ordinary name. I might have known it was the same if I'd recollected

"But there have been none of us in i

ry Craven's old

is onl

en," cried Toye, "and no wonder it wouldn'

teeth. "He wasn't a white man to me or

im to like him a

o know a good d

his one summer. I know on

since the crash that ruined everybody but the man at the bottom of

man seems to have beggared everybody all around excep

poor father; he banished me to the wilds of Australia; and h

or once. "Is that so? No. I

as what finished us off, all but Henry Craven! There'd been a gigantic swindle-special investments recommended by the firm, bogus certificates and all the rest of it. We were all to blame, of course. My poor father ought never to have been a business man at all; he should have

an tell you they don't think any better of him, in the neighborhood, for going to

h he was a wrong 'un himself. He paid for it-paid for two-that I can say! But he was engaged to Ethel Craven at the

e wait

! She was her father's daughter. I wonder y

n Toye. "I wasn't stuck on them either. Say, Cazalet, I w

d. It was the last night in the Bay of Biscay, and Cazalet told how he had been in it a fortnight on his way out by sailing-vessel. He even told it with considerable humor, and hit off sundry passengers of ten years ago as though they had been

eady as anybody to take off my coat. I remember once at a bush shanty they dished up such fruity chops that I said I'd fight the cook if they'd send him up; and I'm blowed if it wasn't a fellow I'd been at school with and worshiped as no end of a swell at games! Potts his name was, old Venus Potts, the best looking chap in the school among other things; and there he was,

Toye, "and that you're going to

returned. "No. I left that to my pal

friend with a geniality impossible to take amiss. "I shoul

was all he said, but once more Toye was regarding him as shrewdly as when the night was y

ssed the "watches aft, sir!" of the sailing-vessel ten years before; and recalled how

on of his own. "I seem to have heard of you and some of your yarns before. Did

in at last, but the question

our out-stations," sai

ye, regarding him with a more critic

ther day," said Cazalet. "I always me

e Macnair lives in a little house down there near your old home. I

got married,"

e. You write to her

. We were kids together," he explained,

d the voice below. "She's one in