"Missed him," he said in answer to the porter's look of inquiry.

"Friend of yo's, suh?"

"Well," said the officer, smiling grimly, "I should have liked to shake
hands with him."

His desire would have been keener could he in any way have known the
nature of the message which the curious stranger had sent to a squalid
little house on William Street in Newport:

A. leaves here for torpedo station on midnight train.

Though he did not know it, despatches of a similar nature had been
following or preceding him these past three months, a fact certainly
not uncomplimentary to an officer who had been out of the academy a
scant ten years, whatever the additional aspects.

As it was, Armitage, not given to worrying, dismissed the incident for
the time being and yielded full attention to the voluble porter. The
young officer was from Kentucky, had been raised with negroes, and
understood and liked them thoroughly.

With five minutes remaining before midnight he was about to knock the
fire from his pipe when a bustle at the gate attracted his attention.
A party, two women, their maids, and a footman bearing some luggage,
was approaching the train. The older woman was of distinguished
bearing and evidently in no amiable mood; the younger was smiling,
trying to pacify her.

"Well, mother," she said, as the party stopped at Armitage's car, "the
worst of the ordeal is over. It has all been so funny and quite
exciting, really."

That she was an interesting girl, Armitage could see even in the
ghastly effulgence of the arc lamps. Slightly above the medium height,
with a straight, slim figure, she was, he judged, about twenty-two or
three years old. Her light hair flowed and rippled from under a smart
hat; her face, an expressive oval; her mouth not small, the lips full
and red. Armitage could not tell about the eyes, but considering her
hair and vivid complexion they were, he decided, probably hazel. From
his purely scientific or rather artistic investigation of the girl's
face, he started suddenly to find that those eyes were viewing him with
an unmistakably humorous disdain. But only for a second. Then as
though some mental picture had been vaguely limned in her mind, she
looked at him again, quickly, this time with a curious expression, as
of a person trying to remember, not quite certain whether she should
bow. She did n't. Instead, she turned to her mother, who was
advancing toward the porter, voicing he