welcome to Troy! Hooroar! One more, lads! Hooroar!" and all
the handkerchiefs waved anew.

"Bless my soul, what _is_ the matter?"

Then suddenly he became aware that all this frantic display was meant
for _him_. How he first learnt it he could never afterwards explain,
but the shock of it brought a deathly faintness.

"There is some horrible mistake," he murmured hoarsely, and turned to
run.

He was too late. The crowd had closed around him, and swept him on,
cheering, yelling, vociferating towards the town. He feebly put up a
hand for silence--

"My friends," he shouted, "you are--"

"Yes, yes, we know. Welcome! Welcome! Hip-hip-hoo-roar!"

"My friends, I assure you--"

_Boom! Boom! Tring-a-ring--boom!_

It was that accursed Fife and Drum Temperance Band. In a moment
five-and-twenty fifers were blowing "See, the conquering hero comes,"
with all their breath, and marching to the beat of a deafening drum.
Behind them came a serried crowd with the stranger in its midst, and
a straggling train of farmers' gigs and screaming urchins closed the
procession.

Miss Limpenny, at the first-storey window of No. 1 Alma Villas, heard
the yet distant din. With trembling fingers she hung out of window a
loyal pocket-handkerchief (worn by her mother at the Jubilee of King
George III), shut down the sash upon it, and discreetly retired again
behind her white blinds to watch.

The cheering grew louder, and Miss Limpenny's heart beat faster.
"I hope," she thought to herself, "I hope that their high connections
will not have given them a distaste for our hearty ways. Well as I
know Troy, I think I might be frightened at this display of public
feeling."

She peeped out over the white blinds. Next door, the Admiral was
fuming nervously up and down his gravel walk. He was debating the
propriety of his costume. Even yet there was time to run up-stairs
and don his cocked hat and gold-laced coat before the procession
arrived. Between the claims of his civil and official positions the
poor man was in a ferment.

"As a man of the world," Miss Limpenny soliloquised, "the Honourable
Frederic Goodwyn-Sandys cannot fail to appreciate our sterling
Admiral. Dear, dear, here they come! I do trust dearest Lavinia has
not put herself in too conspicuous a position at the parlour window.
What a lot of people, to be sure!"

The crowd had gathered volume during its passage through the town,
and the "Conquering Hero" was mo