? Where's he been this thirty years?"

"In hiding!" said Pepper spitefully, and passed hastily upstairs.

The room above was charged with memories of the late lamented.
His portrait in oils hung above the mantel-piece, smaller
portraits--specimens of the photographer's want of art--were scattered
about the room, while various personal effects, including a mammoth
pair of sea-boots, stood in a corner. On all these articles the eye of
Jackson Pepper dwelt with an air of chastened regret.

"It 'ud be a rum go if he did turn up after all," he said to himself
softly, as he sat on the edge of the bed. "I've heard of such things
in books. I dessay she'd be disappointed if she did see him now. Thirty
years makes a bit of difference in a man."

"Jackson!" cried his wife from below, "I'm going out. If you want any
dinner you can get it; if not, you can go without it!"

The front door slammed violently, and Jackson, advancing cautiously
to the window, saw the form of his wife sailing majestically up the
passage. Then he sat down again and resumed his meditations.

"If it wasn't for leaving all my property I'd go," he said gloomily.
"There's not a bit of comfort in the place! Nag, nag, nag, from morn
till night! Ah, Cap'n Budd, you let me in for a nice thing when you
went down with that boat of yours. Come back and fill them boots again;
they're too big for me."

He rose suddenly and stood gaping in the centre of the room, as a mad,
hazy idea began to form in his brain. His eyes blinked and his face grew
white with excitement. He pushed open the little lattice window, and sat
looking abstractedly up the passage on to the bay beyond. Then he put on
his hat, and, deep in thought, went out.

He was still thinking deeply as he boarded the train for London next
morning, and watched Sunset Bay from the window until it disappeared
round the curve. So many and various were the changes that flitted
over his face that an old lady, whose seat he had taken, gave up her
intention of apprising him of the fact, and indulged instead in a bitter
conversation with her daughter, of which the erring Pepper was the
unconscious object.

In the same preoccupied fashion he got on a Bayswater omnibus, and
waited patiently for it to reach Poplar. Strange changes in the
landscape, not to be accounted for by the mere lapse of time, led to
explanations, and the conductor--a humane man, who said he had got an
idiot boy at home--personally laid down th