't mind a packing-case for a chair and
another for a table--eh, Santa?"

"We shall be charmed," said Santa.

"You understand that it will be a picnic," added Farrell.

"My good sir!" protested Foe.

"Yes? . . . It will be better than Engelbaum's, any way. I don't
mind promising," said Farrell. "We will talk over old times, and
Santa shall play her guitar to us."

That is how the two men met.

The _P.M. Diaz_ plied no farther than Callao. From Callao the
Farrells, with their furniture, and Foe in company, worked down by
coasters to Valparaiso.

Does any one of you remember the mystery of the _Eurotas_? which
regularly for about four months occupied from an inch-and-a-half to
four inches space in the newspapers. In 1909 . . . pretty late in
the year. She happened to be the first ship of a new line started
between Valparaiso and Sydney, and her owners had so well boomed the
adventure in the Press that, when she began to be reported as
overdue, the public woke up and she became as interesting as a lost
dog. She was of 12,000 tons, new, Clyde-built, well-found, and
carried a mixed cargo, with about twenty passengers. Two vessels
reported having passed her, about three hundred miles out. After
that she had become as a ship that had never been.

In his casual way--for I must remind you that he and I had lost all
trace of Foe and Farrell in New York--Jimmy lit on the next item of
news.

Long before the _Eurotas_ was posted as "missing," the newspapers
published a list of her passengers. Jimmy, seizing on this, ran his
eye down it, and let out the sort of cry with which he greets all
news, good, bad, or indifferent.

"I say, Otty!--here it is, and what do you make of it?--'The s.s.
_Eurotas_. . . . List of Passengers.

"Mr. and Mrs. P. Farrell, San Ramon, Peru.
Professor J. Foe, of London. . . .'"

And after that there was silence for four years. The bell at Lloyd's
never rang to announce the arrival of the _Eurotas_. By Christmas
her underwriters were paying up, and the newspapers had lost interest
in her fate.

NIGHT THE FIFTEENTH.

REDIVIVUS.

About seven weeks later Norgate called on me with evidence that
settled the last doubt: a letter from Foe, written from Valparaiso.
It was brief enough. It merely announced that he was on the eve of
sailing for Sydney and wished to have credit for 600 pounds opened
with the Bank of New South Wales. "I have booked a berth on the
_