'I?' abstractedly. 'W—why, Masters?'

'Well, it might easily have been, you know. A man meets so many when he travels much.'

'Oh!' with a short laugh; 'and I, you fancy, have travelled much?'

'Why, Lossing, the fact in your case is evident—in your manner, speech, everything.' And I went back to Voisin, and his audacity in addressing Miss Jenrys, finishing by calling him a 'fortune-hunting adventurer.'

Lossing pulled off his cap, and perching it upon his knee, turned his fair head to look up and down the water-way, and then faced me squarely.

'Masters, that's precisely what the fellow called me.'

'Nonsense!' I said sharply.

'And isn't it true?'

'Not in my eyes.'

He was silent for a time, then: