ting on the platform.

I could not help it if I made a poor return to their warm-hearted
congratulations, for my eyes were once more searching for a face I
could not see, so that I was glad and relieved when I heard the
superintendent say that the motor-car that was to take me to the hotel
was ready and waiting.

But just then O'Sullivan came up and whispered that a priest and a nun
were asking to speak to me, and he believed they had news of Mary.

The priest proved to be dear old Father Dan, and the nun to be Sister
Veronica, whom my dear one calls Mildred. At the first sight of their
sad-joyful faces something gripped me by the throat, for I knew what
they had come to say before they said it--that my darling was lost, and
Father Dan (after some priestly qualms) had concluded that I was the
first man who ought to be told of it.

Although this was exactly what I had expected, it fell on me like a
thunderbolt, and in spite of the warmth of my welcome home, I believe in
my soul I was the most downhearted man alive.

Nevertheless I bundled Father Dan and the Sister and O'Sullivan into the
automobile, and jumping in after them, told the chauffeur to drive like
the deuce to the hotel.

He could not do that, though, for the crowd in the station-yard
surrounded the car and shouted for a speech. I gave them one, saying
heaven knows what, except that their welcome made me ashamed of not
having got down to the Pole, but please God I should get there next time
or leave my bones on the way.

We got to the hotel at last (the same that my poor stricken darling had
stayed at after her honeymoon), and as soon as we reached my room I
locked the door and said:

"Now out with it. And please tell me everything."

Father Dan was the first to speak, but his pulpit style was too slow for
me in my present stress of thoughts and feelings. He had hardly got
further than his difference with his Bishop, and the oath he had sworn
by him who died for us to come to London and never go back until he had
found my darling, when I shook his old hand and looked towards the
Sister.

She was quicker by a good deal, and in a few minutes I knew something of
my dear one's story--how she had fled from home on my account, and for
my sake had become poor; how she had lodged for a while in Bloomsbury;
how hard she had been hit by the report of the loss of my ship; and how
(Oh my poor, suffering, heroic, little woman!) she had disappeared on
the appro