ntrary, the
only time they have appealed for your aid, you gave it--very valuable
aid it must have been, too."

Peter Ruff nodded.

"I cannot see," he admitted, "what they can have against me. And yet,
somehow, the wording of my invitation seemed to me a little ominous.
Perhaps," he added, walking to the window and standing looking out for a
moment, "I have a liver this morning. I am depressed. Violet, what does
it mean when you are depressed?"

"Shall you wear your gray clothes for traveling?" she asked, a little
irrelevantly.

"I have not made up my mind," Peter Ruff answered. "I thought of wearing
my brown, with a brown overcoat. What do you suggest?"

"I like you in brown," she answered, simply. "I should change, if I were
you."

He smiled faintly.

"I believe," he said, "that you have a sort of superstition that as I
change my clothes I change my humors."

"Should I be so very far wrong?" she asked. "Don't think that I am
laughing at you, Peter. The greatest men in the world have had their
foibles."

Peter Ruff frowned.

"We shall be away for several days," he said. "Be sure that you take
some wraps. It will be cold, crossing."

"Are you going to close the office altogether?" she asked.

Peter Ruff nodded.

"Put up a notice," he said--"'Back on Friday.' Pack up your books and
take them round to the Bank before you leave. The lift man will call you
a taxi-cab."

He watched her preparations with a sort of gloomy calm.

"I wish you'd tell me what is the matter with you?" she asked, as she
turned to follow her belongings.

"I do not know," Peter Ruff said. "I, suppose I am suffering from what
you would call presentiments. Be at Charing-Cross punctually."

"Why do you go at all?" she asked. "These people are of no further use
to you. Only the other day, you were saying that you should not accept
any more outside cases."

"I must go," Peter Ruff answered. "I am not afraid of many things, but I
should be afraid of disobeying this letter."

They had a comfortable journey down, a cool, bright crossing, and found
their places duly reserved for them in the French train. Miss Brown, in
her neat traveling clothes and furs, was conscious of looking her best,
and she did all that was possible to entertain her traveling companion.
But Peter Ruff seemed like a man who labors under some sense of
apprehension. He had faced death more than once during the last few
years--faced it without flinching, and with