across the smooth sea sleepily. It was an ordinary Algeciras wherry
built to carry a little cargo, and perhaps a dozen passengers, a
fishing boat that smelt strongly of tobacco. The shore was soon
reached, and the passengers, numbering half a dozen, stepped over
the gunwale on to a small landing stage. One of them was better
dressed than his companions, a smart man with a bright flower in the
buttonhole of his jacket, carrying the flowing cloak brightly lined
with coloured velvet without which no Spaniard goes abroad at
sunset. He looked towards the hotel, and was evidently speaking of
it with a boatman whose attitude was full of promise and assurance.

The priest rose and emptied his glass.

'I must ask you to excuse me. Vespers wait for no man, and I hear
the bell,' he said with a grave bow, and went indoors.

Left to himself, Conyngham lapsed into the easy reflections of a man
whose habit it is to live for the present, leaving the future and
the past to take care of themselves. Perhaps he thought, as some
do, that the past dies--which is a mistake. The past only sleeps,
and we carry it with us through life, slumbering. Those are wise
who bear it gently so that it may never be aroused.

The sun had set, and Gibraltar, a huge couchant lion across the bay,
was fading into the twilight of the East when a footstep in the
dining-room made Conyngham turn his head, half expecting the return
of Father Concha. But in the doorway, and with the evident
intention of coming towards himself, Conyngham perceived a handsome
dark-faced man of medium height, with a smart moustache brushed
upward, clever eyes, and the carriage of a soldier. This stranger