that stings and stays in a boy's memory as something unfair. There was a
great row in the end, one night at ten o'clock, when I was sixteen, and
I left the house and tramped into London."

"What in the world did you do?" cried Stella.

"I shipped as a boy on a fruit-tramp for Valencia in Spain. And I
believe that saved my life. For my lungs were beginning to be
troublesome."

The fruit-tramp had not been out more than two days when the fo'c'sle
hands selected the lad, since he had some education, to be their
spokesman on a deputation to the captain. Martin Hillyard went aft with
the men and put their case for better food and less violence. He was not
therefore popular with the old man, and at Valencia he thought it
prudent to desert.

Stella Croyle had turned towards him again. There was a vividness in his
manner, an enjoyment, too, which laid hold upon her. It was curious to
her to realise that this man talking to her here in the Bayswater Road,
had been so lately a ragged youth scouting for his living on the quays
of Southern Spain.

"You were at that place--Alicante!" she cried.

"Part of the time."

"And there Mario Escobar saw you. I wonder why he was frightened lest
you too should have seen him," she added slowly.