them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders.
A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared
the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I
said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door, the gravel-
drive, and the front gate were dimly-noted stages in his headlong
retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to
avoid an imminent collision.

"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming
in through the window; "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that
who bolted out as we came up?"

"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could
only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye
or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."

"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had
a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the
banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night
in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming
just above him. Enough to make anyone their nerve."

Romance at short notice was her speciality.




THE TREASURE SHIP