be alarmed!) will
apply for help to the detective police. Allowing for inevitable
delays, a professional spy, with all his wits about him, and with
those handbills to help him privately in identifying you, will be here
certainly not later than the day after tomorrow--possibly earlier. If
you remain in York, if you attempt to communicate with Mr. Huxtable,
that spy will find you out. If, on the other hand, you leave the city
before he comes (taking your departure by other means than the railway,
of course) you put him in the same predicament as the clerk--you defy
him to find a fresh trace of you. There is my brief abstract of your
present position. What do you think of it?"

"I think it has one defect," said Magdalen. "It ends in nothing."

"Pardon me," retorted the captain. "It ends in an arrangement for your
safe departure, and in a plan for the entire gratification of your
wishes in the direction of the stage. Both drawn from the resources of
my own experience, and both waiting a word from you, to be poured forth
immediately in the fullest detail."

"I think I know what that word is," replied Magdalen, looking at him
attentively.

"Charmed to hear it, I am sure. You have only to say, 'Captain Wragge,
take charge of me'--and my plans are yours from that moment."

"I will take to-night to consider your proposal," she said, after an
instant's reflection. "You shall have my answer to-morrow morning."

Captain Wragge looked a little disappointed. He had not expected the
reservation on his side to be met so composedly by a reservation on
hers.

"Why not decide at once?" he remonstrated, in his most persuasive tones.
"You have only to consider--"

"I have more to consider than you think for," she answered. "I have
another object in view besides the object you know of."

"May I ask--?"

"Excuse me, Captain Wragge--you may _not_ ask. Allow me to thank you
for your hospitality, and to wish you good-night. I am worn out. I want
rest."

Once more the captain wisely adapted himself to her humor with the ready
self-control of an experienced man.

"Worn out, of course!" he said, sympathetically. "Unpardonable on my
part not to have thought of it before. We will resume our conversation
to-morrow. Permit me to give you a candle. Mrs. Wragge!"

Prostrated by mental exertion, Mrs. Wragge was pursuing the course of
the omelette in dreams. Her head was twisted one way, and her body the
other. She snored meekly. At interv