ut notice, and I'll lodge this paper with him in case
anything happens while I'm away. Now we're going to light up the studio
stove. Stay with me, and give me my papers as I want 'em.'

No one knows until he has tried how fine a blaze a year's accumulation
of bills, letters, and dockets can make. Dick stuffed into the stove
every document in the studio--saving only three unopened letters;
destroyed sketch-books, rough note-books, new and half-finished canvases
alike.

'What a lot of rubbish a tenant gets about him if he stays long enough
in one place, to be sure,' said Mr. Beeton, at last.

'He does. Is there anything more left?' Dick felt round the walls.

'Not a thing, and the stove's nigh red-hot.'

'Excellent, and you've lost about a thousand pounds' worth of sketches.

Ho! ho! Quite a thousand pounds' worth, if I can remember what I used to
be.'

'Yes, sir,' politely. Mr. Beeton was quite sure that Dick had gone mad,
otherwise he would have never parted with his excellent furniture for a
song. The canvas things took up storage room and were much better out of
the way.

There remained only to leave the little will in safe hands: that could
not be accomplished to to-morrow. Dick groped about the floor picking
up the last pieces of paper, assured himself again and again that there
remained no written word or sign of his past life in drawer or desk,
and sat down before the stove till the fire died out and the contracting
iron cracked in the silence of the night.

CHAPTER XV

With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander;
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.

With a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney--
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end,
Methinks it is no journey.

--Tom a' Bedlam's Song.

'GOOD-BYE, Bess; I promised you fifty. Here's a hundred--all that I got
for my furniture from Beeton. That will keep you in pretty frocks for
some time. You've been a good little girl, all things considered, but
you've given me and Torpenhow a fair amount of trouble.'

'Give Mr. Torpenhow my love if you see him, won't you?'

'Of course I will, dear. Now take me up the gang-plank and into the
cabin. Once aboard the lugger and the maid is--and I am free, I mean.'

'Who'll look after you on this ship?'

'The head-steward, if there's any use in money. The doctor when we come
to Port Said, if I know any