person, and another hour to explain why I am really here.
Then the weak creature had an idea: "Might not the simplest plan be to
say that his surmises are correct, promise to give his daughter up, and
row away as quickly as possible?" He began to wonder if the girl was
pretty; but saw it would hardly do to say that he reserved his defence
until he could see her.

"I admit," he said, at last, "that I admire your daughter; but she
spurned my advances, and we parted yesterday forever."

"Yesterday!"

"Or was it the day before?"

"Why, sir, I have caught you red-handed!"

"This is an accident," Scrymgeour explained, "and I promise never to
speak to her again." Then he added, as an after-thought, "however
painful that may be to me."

Before Scrymgeour returned to his dingy he had been told that he would
be drowned if he came near that house-boat again. As he sculled away he
had a glimpse of the flirting daughter, whom he described to me briefly
as being of such engaging appearance that six yards was a trying
distance to be away from her.

"Here," thought Scrymgeour that night over a pipe of the Mixture, "the
affair ends; though I dare say the young lady will call me terrible
names when she hears that I have personated her lover. I must take care
to avoid the father now, for he will feel that I have been following
him. Perhaps I should have made a clean breast of it; but I do loathe
explanations."

[Illustration]

Two days afterward Scrymgeour passed the father and daughter on the
river. The lady said "Thank you" to him with her eyes, and, still more
remarkable, the old gentleman bowed.

Scrymgeour thought it over. "She is grateful to me," he concluded, "for
drawing away suspicion from the other man, but what can have made the
father so amiable? Suppose she has not told him that I am an impostor,
he should still look upon me as a villain; and if she has told him, he
should be still more furious. It is curious, but no affair of mine."
Three times within the next few days he encountered the lady on the
tow-path or elsewhere with a young gentleman of empty countenance, who,
he saw must be the real Lothario. Once they passed him when he was in
the shadow of a tree, and the lady was making pretty faces with a
cigarette in her mouth. The house-boat _Heathen Chinee_ lay but a
short distance off, and Scrymgeour could see the owner gazing after his
daughter placidly, a pipe between his lips.

[Illustration]

"He must