r. And what was it all about? How
my old comrades would laugh if they heard that I had quarrelled with my
best friend. Ah, my grandmother's reputation! _Ma foi_, how much more
importance one often attaches to a word than to what it represents!"
Thus angry with himself, mocking the very pretensions on which he
had assumed to reprehend his friend, and actually ridiculing his own
conduct, he embarked from Marseilles to hasten over to England, and
entreat Kelson to discharge the money obligation which yet bound him to
Longworth.

It was a rough night at sea, and the packet so crowded by passengers
that Pracontal was driven to pass the night on deck. In the haste of
departure he had not provided himself with overcoats or rugs, and was
but ill-suited to stand the severity of a night of cold cutting wind and
occasional drifts of hail. To keep himself warm he walked the deck
for hours, pacing rapidly to and fro: perhaps not sorry at heart that
physical discomfort compelled him to dwell less on the internal griefs
that preyed upon him. One solitary passenger besides himself had sought
the deck, and he had rolled himself in a multiplicity of warm wrappers,
and lay snugly under the shelter of the binnacle--a capacious tarpaulin
cloak surmounting all his other integuments.

Pracontal's campaigning experiences had taught him that the next best
thing to being well cloaked oneself is to lie near the man that is
so; and thus, seeing that the traveller was fast asleep, he stretched
himself under his lee, and even made free to draw a corner of the heavy
tarpaulin over him.

"I say," cried the stranger, on discovering a neighbor; "I say, old
fellow, you are coming it a bit too free and easy. You've stripped the
covering off my legs."

"A thousand pardons," rejoined Pracontal. "I forgot to take my rugs
and wraps with me; and I am shivering with cold. I have not even an
overcoat."

The tone--so evidently that of a gentleman, and the slight touch of
a foreign accent--apparently at once conciliated the stranger, for he
said, "I have enough and to spare; spread this blanket over you; and
here 's a cushion for a pillow."

These courtesies, accepted frankly as offered, soon led them to talk
together; and the two men speedily found themselves chatting away like
old acquaintances.

"I am puzzling myself," said the stranger at last, "to find out are you
an Englishman, who has lived long abroad, or are you a foreigner?"

"Is my English so