t him from all questions even concerning his wife.

Knightley's voice was heard behind them, and they turned back into the
room. The Ensign had shaved his matted beard and combed out his hair,
which now curled and shone graciously about his head and shoulders;
his face, too, for all that it was wasted, had taken almost a boyish
zest, and his figure, revealed in the graceful dress of his regiment,
showed youth in every movement. He was plainly by some years a younger
man than Scrope.

He saluted the Major, and Wyley noticed that with his uniform he
seemed to have drawn on something of a soldierly confidence.

"There's your supper, lad," said Shackleton, pointing to a few poor
herrings and a crust of bread which an orderly had spread upon the
table. "It is scanty."

"I like it the better," said Knightley with a laugh; "for so I am
assured I am at home, in Tangier. There is no beef, I suppose?"

"Not so much as a hoof."

"No butter?"

"Not enough to cover a sixpence."

"There is cheese, however." He lifted up a scrap upon a fork.

"There will be none to-morrow."

"And as for pay?" he asked slyly.

"Two years and a half in arrears."

Knightley laughed again.

"Moreover," added Shackleton, "out of our nothing we may presently
have to feed the fleet. It is indeed the pleasantest joke imaginable."

"In a week, no doubt," rejoined Knightley, "I shall be less sensible
of its humour. But to-night--well, I am home in Tangier, and that
contents me. Nothing has changed." At that he stopped suddenly.
"Nothing has changed?" This time the phrase was put as a question, and
with the halting timidity which he had shown before. No one answered
the question. "No, nothing has changed," he said a third time, and
again his eyes began to travel wistfully from face to face.

Tessin abruptly turned his back; Shackleton blinked his eyes at the
ceiling with altogether too profound an unconcern; Scrope reached out
for the wine, and spilt it as he filled his glass; Wyley busily drew
diagrams with a wet finger on the table.

All these details Knightley remarked. He laid down his fork, he rested
his elbow on the table, his forehead upon his hand. Then absently he
began to hum over to himself a tune. The rhythm of it was somehow
familiar to the Surgeon's ears. Where had he heard it before? Then
with a start he remembered. It was this very rhythm, that very tune,
which Scrope's fingers had beaten out on the table when he first
saw Kn