ng only your side face. Of course, I saw my
mistake when you turned and spoke to me. Presidio is considered the
best-looking crook we've ever had."

"Now, that's nice! Where did you say he's gone?"

"I don't know."

Carrington found that out for himself. He first interrupted his voyage
by a stop of some weeks in Japan. Later, at the Oriental Hotel in
Manila, the day of his arrival there, he saw a man observing him with
smiling interest, a kind of smile and interest which prompted Carrington
to smile in return. He was bored because the only officer he knew in the
Philippines was absent from Manila on an expedition to the interior; and
the man who smiled looked as if he might scatter the blues if he were
permitted to try. The stranger approached with a bright, frank look, and
said, "Don't you remember me, Mr. Carrington?"

"No-o."

"I was head waiter at the St. Dunstan."

"Oh, were you? Well, your face has a familiar look, somehow."

"Excuse my speaking to you, but I guess your last trip was what induced
me to come out here."

"That's odd."

"It is sort of funny. I'd saved a good deal--I'm the saving sort--and
the tenner you gave me that night--you remember, the night of _the_
dinner--happened to fetch my pile up to exactly five hundred. So
I says to myself that here was my chance to make a break for
freedom--independence, you understand."

"We're the very deuce for independence down our way."

"Yes, indeed, sir. I was awfully sorry to hear about the trouble you got
in at college; but, if you don't mind my saying so now, you boys were
going it a little that night."

"Going it? What night? There were several."

"The red-fire night. You tipped me ten for that dinner."

"Did I? I hope you have it yet, Mr.--"

"James Wilkins, sir. Did you see Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Culver as you passed
through San Francisco?"

"I did. How did you happen to know that I knew them?"

"I remember that they were chums of yours at college. We heard lots of
college gossip at St. Dunstan's. I called on them in San Francisco, and
Mr. Thorpe got me half-fare rates here. I've opened a restaurant here,
and am doing a good business. Some of the officers who knew me at the
St. Dunstan kind of made my place fashionable. Lieutenant Sommers, of
the cavalry, won't dine anywhere else."

"Sommers? I expected to find him here."

"He's just gone out with an expedition. He told me that you'd be along,
and that I was to see that you didn't starv