it's conscience biting
of me? I never felt it before. Or d'ye think it's sorrow to think that
I've done the whole job too cheap You think it out and let me know later
on. So long."

He waved his hand cheerily to the steward and departed. Mr. Wilks threw
himself into a chair and, ignoring the cold and the general air of
desolation of his best room, gave way to a fit of melancholy which would
have made Mr. Edward Silk green with envy.

CHAPTER XIII

Days passed, but no word came from the missing captain, and only the
determined opposition of Kate Nugent kept her aunt from advertising in
the "Agony" columns of the London Press. Miss Nugent was quite as
desirous of secrecy in the affair as her father, and it was a source of
great annoyance to her when, in some mysterious manner, it leaked out.
In a very short time the news was common property, and Mr. Wilks,
appearing to his neighbours in an entirely new character, was besieged
for information.

His own friends were the most tiresome, their open admiration of his
lawlessness and their readiness to trace other mysterious disappearances
to his agency being particularly galling to a man whose respectability
formed his most cherished possession. Other people regarded the affair
as a joke, and he sat gazing round-eyed one evening at the Two Schooners
at the insensible figures of three men who had each had a modest
half-pint at his expense. It was a pretty conceit and well played, but
the steward, owing to the frenzied efforts of one of the sleeper whom he
had awakened with a quart pot, did not stay to admire it. He finished
up the evening at the Chequers, and after getting wet through on the way
home fell asleep in his wet clothes before the dying fire.

[Illustration: "He finished up the evening at the Chequers."]

He awoke with a bad cold and pains in the limbs. A headache was not
unexpected, but the other symptoms were. With trembling hands he managed
to light a fire and prepare a breakfast, which he left untouched. This
last symptom was the most alarming of all, and going to the door he
bribed a small boy with a penny to go for Dr. Murchison, and sat cowering
over the fire until he came.

"Well, you've got a bad cold," said the doctor, after examining him."
You'd better get to bed for the present. You'll be safe there."

"Is it dangerous?" faltered the steward.

"And keep yourself warm," said the doctor, who was not in the habit of
taking his pa