squarely on his feet and refused to be tripped."

"So he came to England to pursue a certain line?" said Lord Ronsdale
half to himself.

"A man with a partiality for criminal work would naturally look to the
modern Babylon. Steele apparently works more to gratify that
predilection than for any reward in pounds and pence. Must have private
means; have known him to spend a deal of time and money on cases there
couldn't have been a sixpence in."

"How'd he happen to get down in Tasmania? Odd place for a Yankee!"

"That's one of the questions he wasn't asked," laughingly. "Perhaps what
our Teutonic friends would call the _Wander-lust_ took him there."
Rising, "My compliments to Sir Charles when you see him."

Lord Ronsdale remained long at the club and the card-table that night;
over the bits of pasteboard, however, his zest failed to flare high,
although instinctively he played with a discernment that came from long
practice. But the sight of a handful of gold pieces here, of a little
pile there, the varying shiftings of the bright disks, as the vagaries
of chance sent them this way or that, seemed to move him in no great
degree,--perhaps because the winning or losing of a few hundred pounds,
more or less, would have small effect on his fortunes or misfortunes. At
a late, or rather, early, hour he pushed back his chair, richer by a few
coins that jingled in his pocket, and, yawning, walked out. Summoning a
cab, he got in, but as he found himself rattling homeward to the
chambers he had taken in a fashionable part of town, he was aware that
any emotions of annoyance and discontent experienced earlier that night,