pped twice, which
was what I'd been afraid of all along! Then she straightened up, and
went away climbin' to glory, for that blessed star of our hope got
smaller and smaller till we couldn't track it any more. Then we
breathed. We hadn't breathed any since their arrival, but we didn't know
it till we breathed that time--all together. Then we dug our
finger-nails out of our palms an' came alive again--in instalments.

'Lundie spoke first. "We therefore commit their bodies to the air," he
says, an' puts his cap on.

'"The deep--the deep," says Walen. "It's just twenty-three miles to the
Channel."

'"Poor chaps! Poor chaps!" says Mankeltow. "We'd have had 'em to dinner
if they hadn't lost their heads. I can't tell you how this distresses
me, Laughton."

'"Well, look at here, Arthur," I says. "It's only God's Own Mercy you
an' me ain't lyin' in Flora's Temple now, and if that fat man had known
enough to fetch his gun around while he was runnin', Lord Lundie and
Walen would have been alongside us."

'"I see that," he says. "But we're alive and they're dead, don't ye
know."

'"I know it," I says. "That's where the dead are always so damned unfair
on the survivors."

'"I see that too," he says. "But I'd have given a good deal if it hadn't
happened, poor chaps!"

'"Amen!" says Lundie. Then? Oh, then we sorter walked back two an' two
to Flora's Temple an' lit matches to see we hadn't left anything behind.
Walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left. There was the
first man's pistol which we'd forgot to return him, lyin' on the stone
bench. Mankeltow puts his hand on it--he never touched the trigger--an',
bein' an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off--spiteful as
a rattler!

'"Look out! They'll have one of us yet," says Walen in the dark. But
they didn't--the Lord hadn't quit being our shepherd--and we heard the
bullet zip across the veldt--quite like old times. Ya-as!

'"Swine!" says Mankeltow.

'After that I didn't hear any more "Poor chap" talk.... Me? I never
worried about killing _my_ man. I was too busy figurin' how a British
jury might regard the proposition. I guess Lundie felt that way too.

'Oh, but say! We had an interestin' time at dinner. Folks was expected
whose auto had hung up on the road. They hadn't wired, and Peters had
laid two extra places. We noticed 'em as soon as we sat down. I'd hate
to say how noticeable they were. Mankeltow with his neck bandaged (he'd
caught a