ng Dearsley, like as not. 'E shouldn't 'a gone without Jock or
me.'

Reinforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang.
Dearsley's head was still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk or
sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and Dearsley
indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the
intoxicated brave.

'I had my pick o' you two,' he explained to Learoyd, 'and you got my
palanquin--not before I'd made my profit on it. Why'd I do harm when
everything's settled?' Your man _did_ come here--drunk as Davy's sow
on a frosty night--came a-purpose to mock me--stuck his head out of
the door an' called me a crucified hodman. I made him drunker, an'
sent him along. But I never touched him.'

To these things Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity,
answered only, 'If owt comes to Mulvaaney 'long o' you, I'll gripple
you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an' I'll draw t' throat
twistyways, man. See there now.'

The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone
over his supper that evening.

Three days passed--a fourth and a fifth. The week drew to a close and
Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six
attendants, had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy
soldier, his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess,
is not a thing to travel along the ways without comment. Yet no man of
all the country round had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was
not; and Learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a
sacrifice to his ghost. Ortheris insisted that all was well, and in
the light of past experience his hopes seemed reasonable.

'When Mulvaney goes up the road,' said he, ''e's like to go a very
long ways up, specially when 'e's so blue drunk as 'e is now. But what
gits me is 'is not bein' 'eard of pullin' wool off the niggers
somewheres about. That don't look good. The drink must ha' died out in
'im by this, unless 'e's broke a bank, an' then--why don't 'e come
back? 'E didn't ought to ha' gone off without us.'

Even Ortheris's heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the
regiment were out scouring the countryside, and Learoyd had been
forced to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted.
To do him justice, the Colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was
put forward by his much-trusted Adjutant.

'Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,' said