leasant-looking girl."

"I can imagine she seemed very pleasant to you," the girl laughed; "and,
of course, before you got out of the window and climbed to the top of the
house you kissed her, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did," Will said. "Of course she expected to be kissed. I am not at
all used to kissing. In fact, I only experienced it once before, and then
I was a perfectly passive actor in the affair."

The girl flushed up rosily.

"You drew that upon yourself, Alice," her father said. "If you had left
him alone he would not have brought up that old affair."

"I don't care," she said. "I was only thirteen, and he had saved my life."

"You didn't do it again, my dear, I hope, when you met him in the street
to-day."

"Of course not!" she exclaimed indignantly. "The idea of such a thing!"

"Very well, let this be a lesson to you not to enquire too strictly into
such matters."

"Ah! I will bear it in mind," she said.

"I can assure you, Alice, that it was a perfectly friendly kiss. She was
engaged to be married to a young soldier who was a prisoner at Porchester,
and during the past week I have been employed in setting him free, as you
will hear presently. I promised her I would do so if possible, and of
course I kept my word."

"What! you, an English officer, set a French prisoner free! I am shocked!"
Mr. Palethorpe said.

"I would have tried to set twenty of them free if twenty of their
sweethearts had united to get me away from prison."

They laughed heartily at the story of his escape as a pedlar, and were
intensely interested in his account of the manner in which he succeeded in
getting a despatch from the agent of the British Government at Amsterdam.
He continued the narrative until his arrival in England.

"Now we shall hear, I suppose, how this British officer perpetrated an act
of treason against His Most Gracious Majesty."

"Well, I suppose it was that in the eyes of the law," Will laughed.
"Fortunately, however, the law has no cognizance of the affair, at any
rate not of my share in it. I don't suppose it has been heard of outside
Porchester. As His Gracious Majesty has some forty thousand prisoners in
England, the loss of one more or less will not trouble his gracious
brain."

He then related the whole story of Lucien's escape.

"I should have liked to see you dressed up like a pedlar, with your face
all painted, and a wig and whiskers," the girl said, "though I don't
suppose I should have rec