isn't
it?"

This remark was such an utter and ludicrous _fiasco_ that Lady Croston
could not choose but laugh a little.

"I see," she said, "that you have not got over your shyness."

"It is a long while since we met," he blurted out.

"I am very glad to see you," was her simple answer. "Now sit down and
talk to me; tell me all about yourself. Stop; before you begin--how
very curious it is! Do you know I dreamed about you last night--such a
curious, painful dream. I dreamed that I was asleep in my room--which
indeed I was--and that it was blowing a gale and raining in
torrents--which I believe it was also--so there is nothing very
wonderful about that. But now comes the odd part. I dreamed that you
were standing out in the rain and wind and yet looking at me as though
you saw me. I could not see your face because you were in the dark,
but I knew it was you. Then I woke up with a start. It was a most vivid
dream. And now to-day you have come to see me after all these years."

He shifted his legs uneasily. Considering the facts of the case, her
dream frightened him, which was not strange. Fortunately, at that moment
the impressive footman arrived with the tea-things and asked whether he
should light the lamps.

"No," said Lady Croston; "put some wood on the fire." She knew that she
looked her very best in those half-lights.

Then, when she had given him his tea, delighting him by remembering that
he did not like sugar, she fell to drawing him out about the wild life
he had been leading.

"By the way," she said presently, "perhaps you can tell me--a few days
ago I bought a book for my boy"--she had two children--"all about brave
deeds and that sort of thing, and in it there was a story of a volunteer
officer in South Africa (the name was not mentioned) which interested
me very much. Did you ever hear of it? It was this: The officer was in
command of a fort containing a force that was operating against a native
chief. While he was away the chief sent a flag of truce down to the
fort, which was fired on by some of the volunteers in the fort, because
there was a man among the truce party against whom they had a spite.
Just afterwards the officer returned, and was very angry that such a
thing had been done by Englishmen, whose duty it was, he said, to teach
all the world what honour meant.

"Now comes the brave part of the story. Without saying any more,
and notwithstanding the entreaties of his men, who knew that i