them, who hid themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of
mules well in view on the seashore. Luckily, on evidence which I

could never understand, Dominic detected something suspicious.
Perhaps it was by virtue of some sixth sense that men born for

unlawful occupations may be gifted with. "There is a smell of
treachery about this," he remarked suddenly, turning at his oar.

(He and I were pulling alone in a little boat to reconnoitre.) I
couldn't detect any smell and I regard to this day our escape on

that occasion as, properlyspeaking, miraculous. Surely some
supernatural power must have struck upwards the barrels of the

Carabineers' rifles, for they missed us by yards. And as the
Carabineers have the reputation of shooting straight, Dominic,

after swearing most horribly, ascribed our escape to the particular
guardian angel that looks after crazy young gentlemen. Dominic

believed in angels in a conventional way, but laid no claim to
having one of his own. Soon afterwards, while sailing quietly at

night, we found ourselves suddenly near a small coasting vessel,
also without lights, which all at once treated us to a volley of

rifle fire. Dominic's mighty and inspired yell: "A plat ventre!"
and also an unexpected roll to windward saved all our lives.

Nobody got a scratch. We were past in a moment and in a breeze
then blowing we had the heels of anything likely to give us chase.

But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the
darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: "Le

metier se gate." I, too, had the feeling that the trade, if not
altogether spoiled, had seen its best days. But I did not care.

In fact, for my purpose it was rather better, a more potent
influence; like the stronger intoxication of raw spirit. A volley

in the dark after all was not such a bad thing. Only a moment
before we had received it, there, in that calm night of the sea

full of freshness and soft whispers, I had been looking at an
enchanting turn of a head in a faint light of its own, the tawny

hair with snared red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white
neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered with

brilliants and with ruby gleams all along its shaft. That jewelled
ornament, which I remember often telling Rita was of a very

Philistinish conception (it was in some way connected with a
tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue place in my memory, tried to

come into some sort of significance even in my sleep. Often I
dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in the gloom like a

nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect round arm
to take an arrow of gold out of her hair to throw it at me by hand,

like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always
woke up before it struck. Always. Invariably. It never had a

chance. A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the
business some day - or night.

At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp. The
little vessel, broken and gone like the only toy of a lonely child,

the sea itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after
a shipwreck that instead of a fair fight left in me the memory of a

suicide. It took away all that there was in me of independent
life, but just failed to take me out of the world, which looked

then indeed like Another World fit for no one else but unrepentant
sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his moral entity destroyed by

what to him was a most tragicending of our common enterprise. The
lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning thunder-clap - and,

one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain still dazed
and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the railway

station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than another,
involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties with

all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a
discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a

respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel
of his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station

shunning its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast
of a man. I hadn't any money in my pocket. I hadn't even the

bundle and the stick of a destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and
unwashed, and my heart was faint within me. My attire was such

that I daren't approach the rank of fiacres, where indeed I could
perceive only two pairs of lamps, of which one suddenly drove away

while I looked. The other I gave up to the fortunate of this
earth. I didn't believe in my power of persuasion. I had no

powers. I slunk on and on, shivering with cold, through the
uproarious streets. Bedlam was loose in them. It was the time of

Carnival.
Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking to a man in

an astonishing way. I had nearly lost my liberty and even my life,
I had lost my ship, a money-belt full of gold, I had lost my

companions, had parted from my friend; my occupation, my only link
with life, my touch with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone - but

a small penknife and a latchkey had never parted company with me.
With the latchkey I opened the door of refuge. The hall wore its

deaf-and-dumb air, its black-and-white stillness.
The sickly gas-jet still struggled bravely with adversity at the

end of the raised silver arm of the statuette which had kept to a
hair's breadth its graceful pose on the toes of its left foot; and

the staircase lost itself in the shadows above. Therese was
parsimonious with the lights. To see all this was surprising. It

seemed to me that all the things I had known ought to have come
down with a crash at the moment of the final catastrophe on the

Spanish coast. And there was Therese herself descending the
stairs, frightened but plucky. Perhaps she thought that she would

be murdered this time for certain. She had a strange, unemotional
conviction that the house was particularly convenient for a crime.

One could never get to the bottom of her wild notions which she
held with the stolidity of a peasantallied to the outward serenity

of a nun. She quaked all over as she came down to her doom, but
when she recognized me she got such a shock that she sat down

suddenly on the lowest step. She did not expect me for another
week at least, and, besides, she explained, the state I was in made

her blood take "one turn."
Indeed my plight seemed either to have called out or else repressed

her true nature. But who had ever fathomed her nature! There was
none of her treacly volubility. There were none of her "dear young

gentlemans" and "poor little hearts" and references to sin. In
breathless silence she ran about the house getting my room ready,

lighting fires and gas-jets and even hauling at me to help me up
the stairs. Yes, she did lay hands on me for that charitable

purpose. They trembled. Her pale eyes hardly left my face. "What
brought you here like this?" she whispered once.

"If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would see there
the hand of God."

She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then nearly fell
over it. "Oh, dear heart," she murmured, and ran off to the

kitchen.
I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared very misty

and offering me something in a cup. I believe it was hot milk, and
after I drank it she took the cup and stood looking at me fixedly.

I managed to say with difficulty: "Go away," whereupon she
vanished as if by magic before the words were fairly out of my

mouth. Immediately afterwards the sunlight forced through the
slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and Therese was there

again as if by magic, saying in a distant voice: "It's midday". .
. Youth will have its rights. I had slept like a stone for

seventeen hours.
I suppose an honourablebankrupt would know such an awakening: the

sense of catastrophe, the shrinking from the necessity of beginning
life again, the faint feeling that there are misfortunes which must

be paid for by a hanging. In the course of the morning Therese
informed me that the apartment usually occupied by Mr. Blunt was

vacant and added mysteriously that she intended to keep it vacant
for a time, because she had been instructed to do so. I couldn't

imagine why Blunt should wish to return to Marseilles. She told me
also that the house was empty except for myself and the two dancing

girls with their father. Those people had been away for some time