“Suppose,” he said, without looking round, “that a man is in a street row in Dublin, when no one knows he is even in the town. Suppose the—eh—English side of the question is getting battered, and he hits out and kills a drunken beast of an Irish agitator. Suppose an innocent man is accused of it and the right chap is forced to come forward and show up UNDER A FALSE NAME and gets five years. Suppose he escapes after three and a half, and goes home, saying that he has been in America, cattle ranching—having always been a scapegrace, and a ne'er-do-well, who never wrote home when he had gone off in a huff. Suppose he had tried all this for the sake of—a girl, and had carried it through—”
Caleb Harkness had discovered that the identity of the British Plenipotentiary had become known to some of the more curious of the President's guests, who were now mooning innocently around them as they sat. He moved in his chair as if to rise.
“Yes—I can suppose all that,” he said.
The Englishman's nerve was marvellous. He saw what Harkness had seen a moment before, and over his face came the bland smile of an intelligent English man talking naval matters with an American admiral.
“Of course,” he said, “I am at your mercy.”
“I was at yours once; so now we are quits, I take it.”
And the two big men rose and passed out of the room together.
THE TALE OF A SCORPION
Spain is a country where custom reigns supreme. The wonder of to-day is by to-morrow a matter of indifference.