got any notion of my real destination, she'd have
fretted herself into a fever. But if she hadn't guessed at the truth, I
might be able to evade telling her anything at all; perhaps I might
pitch a yarn about having been to Tibet, or Korea, for she would
certainly want to know something of the reason for my changed
appearance. I scarcely recognized myself when I looked at my reflection
in the bedroom mirror at Berlin. A haggard, unkempt ruffian,
gray-haired, and with hollow eyes staring out of a white face,
disfigured by a half-healed cut across the forehead. I certainly was a
miserable looking object, even when I'd had my hair cut and my beard
shaved, since I no longer needed it as a disguise. Mary had always
disliked that beard, but I doubted if she'd know me, even without it.

I landed at Queensboro' on a typical English November afternoon; raw and
dark, with a drizzle falling that threatened every moment to thicken
into a regular fog. There were very few passengers, and I thought at
first I was going to have the compartment to myself; but, at the last
moment, a man got in whom I recognized at once as Lord Southbourne. I
hadn't seen him on the boat; doubtless he'd secured a private stateroom.
He just glanced at me casually,--I had my fur cap well pulled
down,--settled himself in his corner, and started reading a London
paper,--one of his own among them. He'd brought a sheaf of them in with
him; though I'd contented myself with _The Courier_. It was pleasant to
see the familiar rag once more. I hadn't set eyes on a copy since I left
England.

I didn't speak to Southbourne, though; I don't quite know why, except
that I felt like a kind of Rip van Winkle, though I'd only been away a
little more than a couple of months. And somehow I dreaded that lazy but
penetrating stare of his, and the questions he would certainly fire off
at me. So I lay low and said nothing; keeping the paper well before my
face, till we stopped at Herne Hill for tickets to be taken. As the
train started again, he threw down his paper, and moved opposite me, and
held out his hand.

"Hello, Wynn!" he drawled. "Is it you or your ghost? Didn't you know me?
Or do you mean to cut me? Why, man alive, what's wrong?" he added, with
a quick change of tone. I'd only heard him speak like that once
before,--in the magistrate's room at the police court, after the murder
charge was dismissed.

"Nothing; except that we've had a beastly crossing," I answered, w