and cabmen drew up beneath them and lay in wait,
dozing on their folded arms, for the Captain's guests to depart. The
Lion and the Unicorn were rather ashamed of the scandal of it, and they
were glad when, one day, the Captain went away with his tin boxes and
gun-cases piled high on a four-wheeler.

Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said: "I wish you good luck, sir."
And the Captain said: "I'm coming back a Major, Prentiss." But he never
came back. And one day--the Lion remembered the day very well, for on
that same day the newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street shouting out
the news of "a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms. It was then that
a young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss went out to meet
her and led her upstairs. They heard him unlock the Captain's door and
say, "This is his room, miss," and after he had gone they watched her
standing quite still by the centre table. She stood there for a very
long time looking slowly about her, and then she took a photograph of
the Captain from the frame on the mantel and slipped it into her pocket,
and when she went out again her veil was down, and she was crying. She
must have given Prentiss as much as a sovereign, for he called her "Your
ladyship," which he never did under a sovereign.

And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could they
hear the address she gave the cabman. But it was somewhere up St. John's
Wood way.

After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and the
Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful ladies and
smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy flowers and "buttonholes,"
and the little round baskets of strawberries, and even the peaches
at three shillings each, which looked so tempting as they lay in the
window, wrapped up in cotton-wool, like jewels of great price.

Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five guineas
a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew that in the
economy of nations there must always be a higher price for the rich
American, or else why was he given that strange accent, except to betray
him into the hands of the London shopkeeper, and the London cabby?

The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the window
nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St. James's
Church, that stretched between their street and Piccadilly.