"Hardly in your line, Anstruther!" laughed Hawke, casting his eyes
around the depleted table, for Miss Phenie and Miss Genie Forbes
had vanished at last, leaving behind them expanding wave circles
of sharply echoing comment. The noisy Teutons had devoured their
seven francs worth, and the fair bird of passage on their left was
left alone, woman-like, dallying with the last sweets and finishing
her demi bouteille with true French deliberation. "It's a case of
the wolf and the sheep-fold!"

"Not that; not at all!" gayly answered Anstruther. "I have a long
leave, and I only ran over here to oblige His Excellency." He
spoke with all the easy disdain of all underlings born of an Indian
official life--the habitual disregard of the Briton for his inferior
surroundings. "By Jove! you may help me out yourself! You're an
old Delhi man!" He gazed earnestly at Hawke, who started nervously,
and then said:

"You know I've been away for a good bit of the ten years in the
far Orient, but I used to know them all, before I went out of the
line."

"Then you surely know old Hugh Johnstone, the rich, old, retired
deputy commissioner of Oude?" Alan Hawke slowly sipped his champagne,
for his Delhi memories were both risky and uncertain ground.

"I fail to recall the name, Johnstone--Johnstone," murmured Hawke.

"Why, everyone knows old Johnstone; he is an old mutiny man. You
surely do! He was Hugh Fraser until he took the name of Johnstone,
ten years or so ago, on a Scotch relative leaving him a handsome