by those behind--walked two other friends, Darner and Tony, in close
confab.

"I most telegraph F. O," said Skeffy, "that bag is missing, and that
Messenger Butler has gone home to make his report Do you hear me?"

A grunt was the reply.

"I 'll give you a letter to Howard Pendleton, and he 'll tell what is
the best thing to be done."

"I suspect I know it already," muttered Tony.

"If you could only persuade my Lord to listen to you, and tell him the
story as you told it to me, he 'd be more than a Secretary of State if
he could stand it."

"I have no great desire to be laughed at, Skeffy."

"Not if it got you out of a serious scrape,--a scrape that may cost you
your appointment?"

"Not even at that price."

"I can't understand that; it is quite beyond me. They might put _me_
into 'Joe Miller' to-morrow, if they 'd only gazette me Secretary of
Embassy the day after. But here's the hotel; a good sleep will set you
all right; and let me see you at breakfast as jolly as you used to be."

CHAPTER XLVII. ADRIFT

The dawn was scarcely breaking as Tony Butler awoke and set off to visit
the ships in the port whose flags proclaimed them English. There were
full thirty, of various sizes and rigs; but though many were deficient
in hands, no skipper seemed disposed to accept a young fellow who, if he
was stalwart and well grown, so palpably pertained to a class to which
hard work and coarse usage were strangers.

"You ain't anything of a cook, are you?" asked one of the very few who
did not reject his demand at once.

"No," said he, smiling.

"Them hands of yours might do something in the caboose, but they ain't
much like reefing and clewing topsails. Won't suit _me_." And, thus
discouraged, he went on from one craft to the other, surprised and
mortified to discover that one of the resources he had often pictured
to his mind in the hours of despondency was just as remote, just as much
above him, as any of the various callings his friends had set before
him.

"Not able to be even a sailor! Not fit to serve before the mast! Well,
perhaps I can carry a musket; but for _that_ I must return to England."

He fell to thinking of this new scheme, but without any of that hope
that had so often colored his projects. He owed the service a grudge.
His father had not been fairly treated in it So, at least, from his very
childhood, had his mother taught him to believe, and, in consequence,
vehemently opposed all his pl