the train at Sunwich he
hesitated as to whether he should follow the captain or leave him. His
excuse for following was the bag, his reason for leaving the volcanic
condition of its owner's temper, coupled with the fact that he appeared
to be sublimely ignorant that the most devoted steward in the world was
tagging faithfully along a yard or two in the rear.

The few passers-by glanced at the couple with interest. Mr. Wilks had
what is called an expressive face, and he had worked his sandy eyebrows,
his weak blue eyes, and large, tremulous mouth into such an expression of
surprise at the finding of the Court, that he had all the appearance of a
beholder of visions. He changed the bag to his other hand as they left
the town behind them, and regarded with gratitude the approaching end of
his labours.

At the garden-gate of a fair-sized house some half-mile along the road
the captain stopped, and after an impatient fumbling at the latch strode
up the path, followed by Mr. Wilks, and knocked at the door. As he
paused on the step he half turned, and for the first time noticed the
facial expression of his faithful follower.

"What the dickens are you looking like that for?" he demanded.

"I've been surprised, sir," conceded Mr. Wilks; "surprised and
astonished."

Wrath blazed again in the captain's eyes and set lines in his forehead.
He was being pitied by a steward!

"You've been drinking," he said, crisply; "put that bag down."

"Arsking your pardon, sir," said the steward, twisting his unusually dry
lips into a smile, "but I've 'ad no opportunity, sir--I've been follerin'
you all day, sir."

A servant opened the door. "You've been soaking in it for a month,"
declared the captain as he entered the hall. "Why the blazes don't you
bring that bag in? Are you so drunk you don't know what you are doing?"

Mr. Wilks picked the bag up and followed humbly into the house. Then he
lost his head altogether, and gave some colour to his superior officer's
charges by first cannoning into the servant and then wedging the captain
firmly in the doorway of the sitting-room with the bag.

"Steward!" rasped the captain.

"Yessir," said the unhappy Mr. Wilks.

"Go and sit down in the kitchen, and don't leave this house till you're
sober."

Mr. Wilks disappeared. He was not in his first lustre, but he was an
ardent admirer of the sex, and in an absent-minded way he passed his arm
round the handmaiden's waist, and sustain