em behind in the hurry, and father says he's sure
you'll let me go in and get 'em.' 'Oh, does he?' says I. 'Well,
I'm surprised at him and at you, too, Master Reggie, a-thinking I'd
go against orders. Word is that nobody gets in; and nobody _does_,
even the king hisself, till them orders is changed. So you just come
away from that door, and trot right away back to your pa,' I says to
him, 'and ask him from me what kind of a sentry he thinks Bill
Marshall is.' Which sets him a-snivelling and a-pleading till I
has to take him by the shoulder, and fair drag him away before I
could get him to go as he'd been told."

"Well done, Sophie!" exclaimed Cleek. "Gad! what a creature of
resource the woman is, and what an actress she would make, the
vixen! No need to ask you if your son really did come over here
last night, Mr. Beachman; your surprise and indignation have answered
for you."

"I should think it would, by George!" rapped out the dock master.
"What sort of an insane man must you have thought me, Marshall, to
credit such a thing as that? As if I'd have been likely to let a
delicate fifteen-year-old boy go out on an errand of any kind in a
beast of a storm like last night's, much less tell him that he was
to ask a sentry, _in my name_, to disobey his orders. Good God!
gentlemen, it's simply monstrous! Why, look here, Sir Charles; look
here, Mr. Cleek! Even if I'd been guilty of such a thing, and the
boy was willing to go out, he couldn't have done it to save his
life. The poor little chap met with an accident last night and he's
been in bed ever since. He was going down the stairs on his way to
dinner when that terrific clap of thunder came, and the blessed
thing startled him so much that, in the pitch darkness, he missed
his footing, fell clear to the bottom of the staircase, and broke
his collar bone."

"Poor little lad! Too bad, too bad!" sympathized Sir Charles,
feelingly, and, possibly, would have said more but that Cleek's
voice broke in softly, but with a curiously sharp note underlying
its sleekness.

"In the pitch darkness, Mr. Beachman?" it inquired. "The pitch
darkness of a public hotel _at dinner time_? Isn't that rather
extraordinary?"

"It would be, under any other circumstances, sir, but that infernal
clap of thunder interfered in some way with the electric current,
and every blessed light in the hotel went smack out--whisk! like
that!--and left the place as black as a pocket. Everybody thought
for