med, had been instructed to wait up for him, but she had
long gone to bed.

XXXVI

THE WALKING STICK

Had there been, next morning, any curious eyes to watch the conduct of
the gentleman who had come to rent a sporting estate, they would
probably have surmised that he had found something to please his fancy
strangely, and yet that some perplexity still persisted. They would also
have put him down as a much more excitable, and even demonstrative,
young man than they had imagined. On a lonely stretch of shore hard by
the little town he paced for nearly an hour, his face a record of the
debate within, and his cane gesticulating at intervals.

Of a sudden he stopped dead and his lips moved in a murmured
ejaculation, and then after standing stock still for some minutes, he
murmured again:

"Ten to one on it!"

His cane had been stationary during this pause. Now he raised it once
more, but this time with careful attention. It was a light bamboo with a
silver head. He looked at it thoughtfully, bent it this way and that,
and then drove it into the sand and pressed it down. Though to the
ordinary eye a very chaste and appropriate walking stick for such a
gentleman as Mr. Carrington, the result of these tests seemed to
dissatisfy him. He shook his head, and then with an air of resolution
set out for the town.

A little later he entered a shop where a number of walking sticks were
on view and informed the proprietor that he desired to purchase
something more suitable for the country than the cane he carried. In
fact, his taste seemed now to run to the very opposite extreme, for the
points on which he insisted were length, stiffness, and a long and if
possible somewhat pointed ferule. At last he found one to his mind, left
his own cane to be sent down to the hotel, and walked out with his new
purchase.

His next call was at Mr. Simon Rattar's villa. This morning he
approached it without any of the curious shyness he had exhibited on the
occasion of his recent visit. His advance was conducted openly up the
drive and in an erect posture, and he crossed the gravel space boldly,
and even jauntily, while his ring was firmness itself. Mary answered the
bell, and her pleasure at seeing so soon again the sympathetic gentleman
with the eyeglass was a tribute to his tact.

"Good morning, Mary," said he, with an air that combined very happily
the courtesy of a gentleman with the freedom of an old friend, "Mr.
Rattar is a