ly small.

"You are too much for me," he said, after a pause. "You that deal in
politics and the like."

"And the other man's name is Kosmaroff," said Cartoner.

"That's it--a Russian," answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at
the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years. He
carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of
a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the
outward signs of man and nature.

"It beats me," he said. "But I've told you all I can--all, perhaps, that
you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two together
already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it. It
makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the _Minnie's_
hatches."

"It makes me uneasy, too," said Cartoner. "Wait a minute till I put on
another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together."

He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching
the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.

"Going to a swarree?" asked Cable, as between men of the world.

"I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I
shall find him, as you say, at a soiree," answered Cartoner, gravely.

Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting,
having dashed up from the club stand.

"By-the-way," he said, "I shall not be able to come down and see the
_Minnie_ this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow
morning."

"Going foreign?" asked the captain.

"Yes, I am going abroad again," answered Cartoner, and there was a
sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of
action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit
still.

XXVI

IN THE SPRING

The Mangles passed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual
lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither
so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one,
and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady
would select to pass the cold months in.

"I have my orders," said Mangles, rather grimly, "and I must stay here
till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to
Nice if you like."

And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason
or another--reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private
conversation with her aunt--the lad