nger of any kind for the
town. Accordingly, the best thing for its inhabitants to do would be to
go to bed again.

Very few, however, seemed inclined to take this advice. Mrs. Dalziel
might have done so had Milly and I consented; but I had an idea that
Tony would come to the hotel, if possible, sooner or later, expecting us
to be anxious. I was right, for in an hour, or not much more, while we
all sat munching sandwiches, hastily provided, the familiar plump figure
in khaki stalked into the hall. Milly and I both sprang up, and Tony
directed himself toward us; but before he came near enough to speak, I
knew that something really terrible had happened. Whether he meant to
tell us the truth or not was another question. The jolly, round-faced
boy seemed to have lost the characteristics I associated most closely
with him; and when a a youth with comical features of the Billiken type
is suddenly fitted with a tragic mask, the effect is somehow more
alarming than any look of distress on a serious face.

He tried to grin, as his mother greeted him like one returning from the
dead. "Why, mater," he said, "any one'd think to see and hear you that
I'd been blown to smithereens, and this was my ghost. You'll laugh, I
guess, when I tell you what really happened. I got leave to make a dash
and put you out of your misery." When he had gone so far, he stopped,
and swallowed. He looked sick, and all the more so because of the
Billiken grin which he was afraid to let drop. His eyes wandered from
his mother to me, and I saw pain in them. I felt for the first time that
little Tony was a grown-up man.

"Well--well?" Milly urged him sharply. "Why don't you tell us?"

"I'm a bit out of breath," her brother excused himself. "I hiked over
here pretty fast--borrowed a bicycle. Give me a second to get my wind
back, sis."

But this was more than Milly could do. "Weren't you with the guns
to-night?" she asked. "You said you were going to be."

"Did I say that? Well, I was. But--but the row you all heard had nothing
to do with the _guns_, you know. At least, nothing directly. It was--the
ammunition; an accident, you see. One of our chaps dropped a lighted
match, and it set fire to part of our train of ammunition. Three shells
burst, but--but nobody was hurt--except----"

"Except who?" Milly had to break in before Tony could go on. I said
nothing at all. I only looked at him. But after that first glance he
kept his eyes away from me, I belie