rail through vapour that
blotted out everything but the shadow of the hunted man and the dim moon
of the nearest lamp.

Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew himself
to be in Piccadilly. Here he could find his way blindfold; and freed
from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind returned to
Bosinney's trouble.

Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting, as it
were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to him a memory
of his youth. A memory, poignant still, that brought the scent of hay,
the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into the reek and blackness of
this London fog--the memory of a night when in the darkest shadow of a
lawn he had overheard from a woman's lips that he was not her sole
possessor. And for a moment George walked no longer in black Piccadilly,
but lay again, with hell in his heart, and his face to the
sweet-smelling, dewy grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the
moon.

A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and say,
"Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let's go and drink it off!"

But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out of
blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George perceived
that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back, felt his heart
clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings of
the fog. Perspiration started out on his brow. He stood quite still,
listening with all his might.

"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the course of a
game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."

Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just put
together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.' "And who
was she?" he asked.

George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow face,
and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his cheeks and his
heavy-lidded eyes.

'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell you.' For
though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him a bit of a cad.

"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his cue.

"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative expression.
"I made sure it was our friend Soa...."

"Did you?" said George curtly. "Then damme you've made an error."

He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject again
till, towards eleven o'clock, having