He smiled benignly as he remembered this, observing, "I dare say
something will be done--I hope it may; your mother's a wonderful
woman, a wonderful--"

He broke off to listen; Julia listened too, then she rose to her feet.
"That's father," she said, and went to let him in.

Mr. Gillat followed her to the door. "Ah--h'm," he said, as he saw the
Captain coming in slowly, with a face of despairing melancholy and a
drooping step.

"Come down-stairs, father," Julia said. "Come along, Johnny."

They followed her meekly to the basement, where there was a gloomy
little room behind the kitchen reserved for the Captain's special use.
A paraffin stove stood in the fire-place also, own brother to the one
in the dining-room; Julia stooped to light it, while her father sank
into a chair.

"Gillat," he said in a voice of hopelessness, "I am a ruined man."

"No?" Mr. Gillat answered sympathetically, but without surprise. "Dear
me!" He carefully put down the hat and stick he had brought with him,
the one on the edge of the table, the other against it, both so badly
balanced that they fell to the ground.

"You shouldn't do it, you know," he said, with mild reproof; "you
really shouldn't."

"Do it!" the Captain cried. "Do what?"

Julia looked up from the floor where she knelt trimming the
stove-lamp. "Have five whiskeys and sodas," she said, examining her
father judicially.

He did not deny the charge; Julia's observation was not to be avoided.

"And what is five?" he demanded with dignity.

"Three too many for you," she answered.

"Do you mean to insinuate that I am intoxicated?" he asked. "Johnny,"
he turned pathetically to his friend, "my own daughter insinuates that
I am intoxicated."

"No," Julia said, "I don't; I say it does not agree with you, and it
doesn't--you know you ought not to take more than two glasses."

"Is that your opinion, Gillat?" Captain Polkington asked. "Is that
what you meant? That I--I should confine myself to two glasses of
whiskey and water?"

"I wasn't thinking of the whiskey," Johnny said apologetically; "it
was the gees."

The Captain groaned, but what he said more Julia did not hear; she
went out into the kitchen to get paraffin. But she had no doubt that
he defended the attacked point to his own satisfaction, as he always
had done--cards, races, and kindred pleasant, if expensive, things,
ever since the days long ago before he sent in his papers.

These same pleasant things had