he is
a marquis. Well, just before I first met her, Adelina, worn out by her
father's alternate cajolery and brutality, had yielded, almost promising
to do as he wished. It was during the war----"

"That war!" exclaimed Mrs. Brundage. "It's got a deal to answer for.
Now, there's Tom; it's changed his heart from cows and horses to
motor-cars and airyplanes."

"It was in a hospital----" said Dick.

"Them hospitals!" she interrupted. "I know 'em. And very dangerous
institootions I consider 'em."

"I see you do--so you will understand that part. When we had made the
discovery that each was the only thing in the world to the other, and
she had told her father, the Marquis of Ontario, that she would wed none
but me, his anger was so terrible that I dared no longer leave her
beneath his roof. There was nothing for it but----"

"An elopement!" burst from Mrs. Brundage.

Dick nodded.

"We did it--last night, in my car. But about four miles from
Millsborough, we had an accident. You've seen my face, Mrs. Brundage,
but you haven't seen my car. And we knew that the Marquis was not far
behind us. So we dragged ourselves along the ditch into which we had
fallen, and hid. At dawn we saw him go tearing by in his sumptuous
sixteen-cylinder electric landaulette. After that----"

A crunching of gravel outside brought a not inconvenient interruption to
this romance.

Dick was out of the kitchen like a flash, his right hand in the pocket
of his jacket.

Mrs. Brundage heard a voice that was not his, and words of a language
she had never heard before. Having no reason to fear anything worse than
the Marquis of Ontario, she followed her hero with a stride as swift and
almost as silent as his own.

Before she reached the corner, she heard his voice in sharp command,
answered by a rapid flow of words in a tongue and voice strange to her.

She checked her advance suddenly and noisily, heard a second order
jerked out, and showed herself.

"Abajo las manos," Dick had said--just in time, for Pepe el Lagarto's
hands hung by his sides once more when Mrs. Brundage came round the
corner and caught her first sight of him.

A small, dingy-faced man, with fear in the lines of his mouth, but a
pathetic, dog-like trust in his eyes, stood looking up at the stern
master who, it seemed, had caught him unawares.

Mrs. Brundage did not like the new-comer, nor the aspect of this
meeting.

"Who is this man, Mr.--Mr. Dick?" she asked.

He tur