d packet
containing your final instructions. It is even possible that I may come
aboard and hand them to you in person."

The weird little deformity laughed his horrible laugh. "Pleased to see
you, I'm sure," he responded, when the convulsions in his throat had
ceased. "You might be making the voyage with us, I reckon?"

"God forbid!" exclaimed Travers Nugent fervently.

CHAPTER XIII

FOOL'S PARADISE LOST

Leslie Chermside walked out of his lodgings in the Ottermouth main
street and struck downwards towards the parade. He had promised to take
Violet Maynard and Aunt Sarah Dymmock out for a sail in a boat he had
hired, and, lover-like, he was nearly an hour ahead of the appointment
he had made with the two ladies to meet him on the beach.

Three days had passed since the unpremeditated avowal of his love for
the millionaire manufacturer's daughter. They slipped by like a happy
dream, no care for the future, or the deadlock to which the future must
inevitably bring him, disturbing the sweet dalliance of the present till
the previous evening. He had dined at the Manor House alone with the
family and, as they sat over their wine after the departure of Violet
and Aunt Sarah, Montague Maynard had, quite kindly, put to him some
pertinent questions, the drift of which there was no mistaking. Mr.
Maynard would not have attained to his position in the commercial world
had he not been a student of men and things, and, without definitely
stating as much, he let it be clearly understood that he was not blind
to what was going on. His manner implied that he was not unfriendly,
but, at the same time, in asking about the young ex-Lancer's resources,
he spoke as if he had a right to the information.

He opened the battle in his usual blunt, jovial fashion, without any
beating about the bush--

"So, my young friend, you're a warm man, Travers Nugent tells me. Lucky
chap, to possess inherited wealth, though I'm not sure that I wouldn't
have preferred you to have made a pile by hard work, as I have."

Leslie suddenly finding himself on the edge of a precipice, clutched for
the only available support--a deprecating and rather shamefaced laugh.
"Mr. Nugent must be given to exaggeration, sir," he said. "I have never
represented myself as a rich man. As a matter of fact I am--not by any
means what you would consider rich."

He thought grimly of the few L5 notes left to him out of the sum
advanced by Nugent for current expen