by the hand, gave one of his courtly bows, and declared that he was
touched by his friendly proceedings.

"I am not alluding to this trifling amount which you decline to take,"
he went on, giving a shake to Davidson's hand. "But I am touched by your
humanity." Another shake. "Believe me, I am profoundly aware of having
been an object of it." Final shake of the hand. All this meant that
Heyst understood in a proper sense the little Sissie's periodic
appearance in sight of his hermitage.

"He's a genuine gentleman," Davidson said to us. "I was really sorry
when he went ashore."

We asked him where he had left Heyst.

"Why, in Sourabaya--where else?"

The Tesmans had their principal counting-house in Sourabaya. There had
long existed a connection between Heyst and the Tesmans. The incongruity
of a hermit having agents did not strike us, nor yet the absurdity of a
forgotten cast-off, derelict manager of a wrecked, collapsed, vanished
enterprise, having business to attend to. We said Sourabaya, of course,
and took it for granted that he would stay with one of the Tesmans.
One of us even wondered what sort of reception he would get; for it was
known that Julius Tesman was unreasonably bitter about the Tropical
Belt Coal fiasco. But Davidson set us right. It was nothing of the
kind. Heyst went to stay in Schomberg's hotel, going ashore in the hotel
launch. Not that Schomberg would think of sending his launch alongside
a mere trader like the Sissie. But she had been meeting a coastal
mail-packet, and had been signalled to. Schomberg himself was steering