up
into an overcoat) reposed on a chair by his side. And he must just have
brought some liner from sea, because another chair was smothered under
his black waterproof, ample as a pall, and made of three-fold oiled
silk, double-stitched throughout. A man's hand-bag of the usual size
looked like a child's toy on the floor near his feet.

I did not nod to him. He was too big to be nodded to in that parlour.
He was a senior Trinity pilot and condescended to take his turn in the
cutter only during the summer months. He had been many times in charge
of royal yachts in and out of Port Victoria. Besides, it's no use
nodding to a monument. And he was like one. He didn't speak, he didn't
budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up, immovable,
and almost bigger than life. It was extremely fine. Mr. Stonor's
presence reduced poor old Jermyn to a mere shabby wisp of a man, and
made the talkative stranger in tweeds on the hearthrug look absurdly
boyish. The latter must have been a few years over thirty, and was
certainly not the sort of individual that gets abashed at the sound
of his own voice, because gathering me in, as it were, by a friendly
glance, he kept it going without a check.

"I was glad of it," he repeated, emphatically. "You may be surprised at
it, but then you haven't gone through the experience I've had of her.
I can tell you, it was something to remember. Of course, I got off scot
free myself--as you can see. She did her best to break up my pluck for
me tho'. She jolly near drove as fine a fellow as ever lived into a
madhouse. What do you say to that--eh?"

Not an eyelid twitched in Mr. Stonor's enormous face. Monumental! The
speaker looked straight into my eyes.

"It used to make me sick to think of her going about the world murdering
people."

Jermyn approached the handkerchief a little nearer to the grate and
groaned. It was simply a habit he had.

"I've seen her once," he declared, with mournful indifference. "She had
a house--"

The stranger in tweeds turned to stare down at him, surprised.

"She had three houses," he corrected, authoritatively. But Jermyn was
not to be contradicted.

"She had a house, I say," he repeated, with dismal obstinacy. "A great,
big, ugly, white thing. You could see it from miles away--sticking up."

"So you could," assented the other readily. "It was old Colchester's
notion, though he was always threatening to give her up. He couldn't
stand her racket any m