been doing with yourself these past three years?"

Rutton shook his head gravely. "I can't say."

"You mean you won't?"

"If you will have it that way."

"Well ... I give you up."

"That's the most profitable thing you could do, David."

"But, seriously now, this foolish talk about hiding is all a joke,
isn't it?"

"No," said Rutton soberly; "no, it's no joke." He sighed profoundly.
"As for my recent whereabouts, I have been--ah--travelling
considerably; moving about from pillar to post." To this the man added
a single word, the more significant in that it embodied the nearest
approach to a confidence that Amber had ever known him to make:
"Hunted."

"Hunted by whom?"

"I beg your pardon." Rutton bent forward and pushed the cigarettes to
Amber's elbow. "I am--ah--so preoccupied with my own mean troubles,
David, that I had forgotten that you had nothing to smoke. Forgive me."

"That's no matter, I--"