f
his discomfiture; but his fury lost nothing by growing cool, and on the
third night he picked a quarrel with Sir Tancred.

Next morning Sir Tancred asked Dorothy to take the children to Nice for
a few days, since he had heard that there was some fever at one of the
smaller hotels. He watched over their departure himself, and Tinker
was aware of an indefinable something in his manner which puzzled him.
It was, perhaps, that something which gave him a curious, unsettled
feeling, as if they were going on a much longer journey. As they left
the hotel, Lord Crosland came up from the Condamine carrying a square
case under his arm; it did not escape Tinker's observant eye; but in
the bustle of their removal he gave it but scant attention. In the
evening Dorothy noticed that he was restless and absent-minded, and
asked him what was the matter.

"I don't know," he said; "I have a funny feeling as though something
was going to happen, and I can't think of anything. It's just as if
I'd missed something I ought to have noticed. It always makes me
uncomfortable. Yet I can't think what it can be."

She made many suggestions, but to no purpose, and he went to bed
dissatisfied. He awoke once or twice in the night--a very rare thing
with him; possibly, so close was their kinship, his father's disturbed
spirit in some obscure and mysterious fashion was striving to warn him,
or prepare him for calamitous tidings. In the early morning he slept
soundly, and awoke rather later than was his wont; and, even as he
awoke, the square case which Lord Crosland had carried sprang into his
mind, and he knew it to be a case of pistols. In a flash everything
was clear to him; his father was going to fight Count Sigismond, and
had sent him to Nice to be out of the way.

He sprang out of bed, and dashed for his watch; it was two minutes past
seven. They would fight at eight; he had nearly an hour. In three
minutes he was dressed, and racing down the stairs. He met Dorothy
coming up.

"What's the matter?" she cried at the sight of his white face.

"My father--he's fighting Le Comte de Puy-de-Dome, and he's got us out
of the way!"

He did not see her turn pale, and clutch the banisters; he was racing
out of the hotel. He ran to the coach-house, wheeled his bicycle into
the courtyard, mounted, and rode down the street. He went at a
moderate pace through the town, but once on the Corniche road, he drove
the machine as hard as he coul