"I'll call to-morrow, and get a considered opinion upon my Soho house of entertainment," I remarked, as the Colonel opened his door, and paused at the entrance to bid us a final good night.

   "Glad to see you," he replied, as he grasped my

   hand and shook it warmly. "But of one thing you may rest assured. So long as that bin of port holds out, your house of entertainment may count upon me as a regular customer whenever I dine in town."

   "Opium isn't in it," commented Winter in a low voice, as he set the car in motion and wheeled out of the drive. "How he could have slept so soundly through it all absolutely beats me."

   I did not reply. My attention was concentrated upon one of the upper windows, at which I thought I had seen a form I knew very well make a brief appearance. But we left the window and house behind us. Winter's place was only about a hundred yards further up the road.

   So saying, Winter handed me a stately tumbler, and the mixture was so much to my liking that I felt an involuntary relaxation of my facial muscles immediately I obeyed the command. I stretched myself at length in the easy chair which I had drawn up before the fire, and felt able to forgive even the Motor Pirate. We were alone in the apartment which Winter called his study, but since the only books he read therein were motor-catalogues, and the lounges with which the snuggery was furnished were much more conducive to repose than to mental exertion, I refused to acknowledge its claim to the title. That, by the way. The fire was burning brightly. Winter's red, rugged, honest face was beaming with almost equal radiance. Who could help feeling happy?

   Then Mannering was announced, and Mannering was a man I had learned to passively dislike. Why, I scarcely

   knew. I was aware of nothing against him. Indeed, when six months previously, on my first coming to St. Albans, I had been introduced to him, I had been rather favourably impressed. He was a tall dark man of thirty-five, with more than the average endowment of good looks. He could tell a good story, had shot big game in most parts of the world, was well-read, intelligent, possessed unexceptionable manners, and yet—— Well, Winter had none of his various qualifications, but I would at any time far rather have had one friend like Winter than a hundred like the other man.

   I had first made his acquaintance at Colonel Maitland's house, where I 

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