man was not so stupid as he had pretended to be. He had accurately
divined the inner meaning of what had happened. She had forgotten the
necessity for haste which had been so importunate a few minutes
before.

"You must be a mind-reader," she said.

"No, I am not at all a clever person," he laughed. "Indeed, as I told
you, I am always blundering into trouble, and making things
uncomfortable for my friends. I regret to say I am rather under a
cloud just now in the service, and I have been called upon to endure
the frown of my superiors."

"Why, what has happened?" she asked. After their temporary halt at the
corner where they had been overtaken, they now strolled along together
like old friends, her prohibition out of mind.

"Well, you see, I was temporarily in command of the cruiser coming
down the Baltic, and passing an island rock a few miles away, I
thought it would be a good opportunity to test a new gun that had been
put aboard when we left England. The sea was very calm, and the rock
most temptsome. Of course I knew it was Russian territory, but who
could have imagined that such a point in space was inhabited by
anything else than sea-gulls."

"What!" cried the girl, looking up at him with new interest. "You
don't mean to say you are the officer that Russia demanded from
England, and England refused to give up?"

"Oh, England could not give me up, of course, but she apologized, and