passes this way, so I couldn't expect you, could I?" and she looked at him quizzically.

"Private!" he faltered, "I beg your pardon; I didn't know." "Of course not, but you would have been very welcome, as Lawrence's friend, had I been aware of it, I'm sure; and I must make Tiny respect his protector. Lawrence has been a whole week away in London, and left me here alone. Did he tell you? "No," answered the captain. "I don't think he did.”

He did no justice to the recherché little dinner; all he wanted to do was to escape. He knew that he had made a fool of himself, and was well aware that Mrs. La Coste knew it too; and more, that she had told her husband all about it.

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Well, now for your confession, Berkeley," said the major, as he lighted his cigar by that of his friend, and talked between the whiffs. "What is she like? Dark or fair, merry or pensive? Beautiful, of course, or she never would have attracted you."

"There is no 'she' in the case," asserted the other, almost roughly, "and never will be. I thought you wanted to hear all about the old set; there have been a lot of changes, even in this short time."

"And so I do; drive on, Berkeley. I'm settled as a good listener," and he ensconced himself in an Indian lounging chair, looking thoroughly at home.

But the Captain never before was so vague and disjointed, and took his leave as early as he possibly could.

That night he drew up a telegram, and desired it might be sent off at the earliest hour the following morning. It was to his friend Falkner, begging him to bring the yacht to fetch him the same day.

He was waiting upon the seashore with his small portmanteau beside him when the little craft hove in sight, and they sent a boat to the shore to bring him on board.

"Well, old man, and how is the fair inamorata?" laughed his friend, looking at his clouded face.

"She is, like all the rest, a heartless coquette,” returned Berkeley savagely.

Captain Falkner gave a long low whistle.

"Does the wind lie that way? Well, old fellow, I was once jilted myself, and I can sympathize with you."

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Jilted," replied the other sharply, "I've not been jilted, I've only been made a fool of. I fell in love with a married woman, and she and her husband enjoyed the joke together; that's all, and so ends my day-dream."

And from that hour Captain Berkeley has never been known to mention the subject.

Captain Falkner learnt the details later on from Major La Coste, who seemed to think the affair rare fun.

A FALSE START.

BY HAWLEY SMART,

BREEZIE LANGTON,” 66 BAD TO BEAT," ""THE OUTSIDER," ETC., ETC.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MR. MOLECOMBE GETS UNEASY.

MR. PICK listened to the further evolution of Richard Madingley's scheme with considerable interest, but not altogether with enthusiasm. No man keener than him to turn five hundred pounds into a thousand in a few weeks, and that, he computed, was about the price he ought to receive for his assistance, pecuniarily and otherwise. But then Mr. Pick had a wholesome dread of placing himself within the clutches of the law, and he had a vague idea that the personation of a well-known personage would come under the head of fraud or conspiracy, or something of that sort. Moral scruples the bookmaker had none, still he had escaped once or twice by the skin of his teeth; had indeed once left the dock under the lash of the judge's tongue, and had to listen to the regrets of that functionary that his wrong-doing had been so skilfully planned as to just defeat the administration of justice. No, Mr. Pick did not approve of the bill of fare at Millbank. No, the bookmaker, although he had embarked on some very risky enterprizes in his early career, was too substantial a man now not to weigh possible results, however profitable the game might appear to be, and anything that looked like ending in a law-court he shrank from. He was not quite clear whether the personation of somebody else was not an indictable offence. He rather thought it was, he had hazy ideas of "conspiracy with intent to defraud," being a transgression that carried severe pains and penalties. His mouth watered at the idea of the sum he might demand for his help, but he had no idea of burning his fingers in pulling Dick's chestnuts out of the fire.

"I've been thinking this out," he said slowly, after a silence of some moments, which the other had taken care not to interrupt. "It's rather a risky business, and if I go into it you'll have to pay pretty smartly for my help. I tell you what I'll do. I'll come down and look at it, and that's as much as I'll promise just now. If I fancy the spec, well and good, if not, there's no harm done." "You will come back with me to-morrow; remember it is important that I should produce the relation from whom I have

expectations as soon as may be. I never saw John Madingley, but you have, and well know the sort of line to take up-country parson with sporting tastes."

"I can't personate him to anybody who has ever seen him," replied Mr. Pick, "but the chances are nobody in Tunnleton ever has. I'll be ready to-morrow; you wire and order dinner," and, so saying, the bookmaker rose to his feet and, nodding good-night, left the room.

Could the precious pair have overheard a conversation at Tunnleton, the going down there would have been deemed inexpedient by both of them.

"No, Madingley, I ran up to town and did what you wished. but you had better, at present, let things take their course. At all events there is nothing to be done with your namesake till he returns. They know nothing about this young gentleman at Scotland Yard, and pooh-poohed the whole business. Said that he very likely had a right to the name, and had only exaggerated in claiming relationship with you. In short," concluded General Shrewster," they decline to interfere at present in any way, and 1 suppose they're right. This fellow would probably declare he only claimed to be a distant connection of yours, and that the rest was merely Tunnleton gossip."

"Yes," replied John Madingley, " it is always open to a man to claim that sort of kinship, and he does himself little harm even if the other side disavow it."

"Yes, a cool hand like this young gentleman will get out of it easily enough. He does not want money apparently, and is certainly not deficient in cheek."

'I know the sort," rejoined Madingley laughing, "plenty of bounce and swagger till they're collared We'll leave the fellow alone, and only give Mr. Molecombe a hint in case his daughter's marriage with my namesake becomes imminent. It will be for him then to discover whether Mr. Richard Madingley is sailing under false colours or not."

"Yes," replied Shrewster with a quiet smile, "and it will be a terrible shock to Tunnleton should he turn out to be a rank impostor."

"Yes," rejoined the master of Bingwell, "the idea that he has been regularly had rouses the bile of the Yorkshireman, and I don't suppose the southerners take it more kindly."

So, it having been settled between them that for the present they would merely watch the course of events, neither John Madingley nor his old friend troubled themselves any more for the present about the doings of this new star that had suddenly risen above the town horizon.

But if they did not trouble themselves about Dick Madingley's proceedings Tunnleton did; and the Prauns and the Maddoxes and the Torkeslys shook their heads, and agreed that there was

something excessively odd in the newly-engaged man's persistent absence. Mr. Pick had suddenly found that his own legitimate business would detain him some time longer in London, and with the somewhat hazardous game that Richard Madingley was playing he did not consider it advisable to re-appear upon the scene until his pockets were replenished. On that point Mr. Pick was very decided he would advance no money until, as he expressed it, he had been "to look at the speculation."

Mrs. Maddox said boldly that the young men had changed a good deal since her time; that if Maddox had treated her in such nonchalant fashion after they were engaged he would very soon have "had the mitten."

Mrs. Praun opined that there was no standing the youth of the present day, they really seemed to expect the young ladies to do all the love-making, to which her irascible husband responded, "And by gad, madam, they are not disappointed," which produced one of those Mediterranean squalls wont to disturb the even tenor of the Prauns' domestic life--a hot-tempered couple who not only indulged in volcanic explosions at home, but combined in volcanic irruptions abroad, and were a terror and-metaphorically -a very lava-flood to any weak-kneed society they might get into. As for the Maddoxes, they never boiled, but persistently gurgled, like the steady, monotonous wash of the sea against the shore; dangerous in their very persistency in any view they might have taken up. But there was one very curious thing in all this which wrought very much to the soi-disant Richard Madingley's advantage. Influenced considerably by their enmity to Maurice Enderby, still further stimulated by the Reverend John Madingley declining to make their acquaintance, the two generals gradually worked themselves into the belief that John Madingley was an impostor.

It's astonishing how it is possible to persuade one's self to a belief in accordance with one's wishes, albeit we have no facts. whatever to justify that opinion, and the Maddoxes and the Prauns were not at all people to keep what they thought to themselves. The consequence of all this was, that, far from suspicion falling upon the impostor, there was a lurking misgiving that the Reverend John Madingley was not what he represented himself to be; in the eyes of the Prauns and the Maddoxes a clergyman like Maurice Enderby, who "dabbled in horse-racing," would be capable of almost anything; they would hardly have hesitated at almost openly insinuating that the whole thing was a fraud but for one fact; there was no getting over that: General Shrewster knew and visited the Reverend Mr. Madingley, and he was not only above suspicion but carried far too many guns to be assailed with impunity; he might have been imposed upon, but it was not likely, nor did even General Praun feel that he should care about hinting that to him. Shrewster's social position was beyond

dispute, and he had more than once shown that he could say very bitter things when provoked. Tunnleton had long ago come to the conclusion that Shrewster was a man to be let alone.

But a man who was made wonderfully uneasy by all these varied rumours was Mr. Molecombe. He was pledged to give his daughter to this young man Richard Madingley. Here was his kinsman, from whom, according to his own account, he expected to inherit this Yorkshire property, and that kinsman firmly but politely refused to see Mr. Molecombe; although the banker had written and explained the peculiar relations under which he stood to Richard Madingley, the recluse of Bingwell, although actually residing in Tunnleton, kept his doors resolutely closed upon him. Then these sinister rumours reached his ears that the Rev. John Madingley was an impostor, and this, with the prolonged absence of his son-in-law that was to be, still further increased the banker's uneasiness. It was difficult for him to get-not at the real state of things, but even at what people thought; it was not likely that men like Generals Praun and Maddox would confide their suspicions to him, and a wholesome respect for General Shrewster made them rather shy of expressing their opinion publicly. The banker was much attached to his child, and that he should feel uncomfortable about her engagement was only natural, and there could be no doubt about it, that just at present Mr. Richard Madingley's real status was under suspicion. General Shrewster was the only man behind the scenes, for John Madingley had not even confided to the Enderbys that he knew nothing whatever of this young gentleman who had thought proper to claim kinship with him. Shrewster was, what he would have termed, watching the match with great interest. "Madingley's quite right," he would mutter to himself, "in waiting for this impostor to show his hand; unless he has heard of John Madingley's arrival, and got scared, he is bound to make the first move, and then it will be a case of checkmate almost immediately. The Scotland Yard people are right; we must allow this young gentleman a little more rope in order to make his discomfiture a certainty. However, if he should come back to Tunnleton there will be no doubt about that, and in any case it is clearly John Madingley's duty to interfere, and prevent Edith Molecombe being married to this man."

Mr. Pick's business being at length brought to a conclusion, it was settled that he should run down to Tunnleton that evening in the assumed character of Dick's uncle, and see what he thought of things. Madingley at once telegraphed to his servants to have dinner and a spare bed made ready, and a little before six he and Mr. Pick settled themselves comfortably in a first-class carriage and started for their destination.

There was only one other passenger, and he was apparently absorbed in his cigar and evening paper. Dick cast one long keen

H