Hamilton hanged first, and requested him to conduct me to my room with
no more of his nonsense. He produced then a key from somewhere and led
the way out of his lair, giving me a vicious sidelong look in passing.

"Any one I know staying here?" I asked him before he left my room.

He had recovered his usual pained impatient tone, and said that Captain
Giles was there, back from a Solo Sea trip. Two other guests were
staying also. He paused. And, of course, Hamilton, he added.

"Oh, yes! Hamilton," I said, and the miserable creature took himself off
with a final groan.

His impudence still rankled when I came into the dining room at tiffin
time. He was there on duty overlooking the Chinamen servants. The tiffin
was laid on one end only of the long table, and the punkah was stirring
the hot air lazily--mostly above a barren waste of polished wood.

We were four around the cloth. The dozing stranger from the chair was
one. Both his eyes were partly opened now, but they did not seem to see
anything. He was supine. The dignified person next him, with short side
whiskers and a carefully scraped chin, was, of course, Hamilton. I have
never seen any one so full of dignity for the station in life Providence
had been pleased to place him in. I had been told that he regarded me as
a rank outsider. He raised not only his eyes, but his eyebrows as well,
at the sound I made pulling back my chair.

Captain Giles was at the head of the table. I exchanged a few words of
greeting with him and sat down on his left. Stout and pale, with a great
shiny dome of a bald forehead and prominent brown eyes, he might have