“I shall call to this policeman,” gasped the Haddock.

“And appear with your low-class relation in Court?  Not you, Haddock.  I’d swear you were my twin brother, and that you wouldn’t pay me the four pence you borrowed of me last week.”

And the cruel penance was inflicted to the last inch.  Near the end the Haddock groaned:  “Here’s Amelia Harringport—­Oh! my God,” and Dam quickly turned his face unto the South and gazed at the fair land of France.  He remembered that General Harringport dwelt in these parts.

At the toll-gate Dam released the perspiration-soaked wretch, who had suffered the torments of the damned, and who seemed to have met every man and woman whom he knew in the world as he paraded the promenade hanging lovingly to the arm of a common soldier!  He thought of suicide and shuddered at the bare idea.

“Well, I’m awf’ly sorry to have to run away and leave you now, dear Haddock.  I might have taken you to all the pubs in Folkestone if I’d had time.  I might have come to your hotel and dined with you.  You will excuse me, won’t you?  I must go now.  I’ve got to wash up the tea things and clean the Sergeant’s boots,” said Dam, cruelly wringing the Haddock’s agonized soft hand, and, with a complete and disconcerting change, added, “And if you breathe a word about having seen me, at Monksmead, or tell Lucille, I’ll seek you out, my Haddock, and—­we will hold converse with thee”.  Then he strode away, cursing himself for a fool, a cad, and a deteriorated, demoralized ruffian.  Anyhow, the Haddock would not mention the appalling incident and give him away.

Nemesis followed him.

Seeking a quiet shop in a back street where he could have the long-desired meal in private, he came to a small taxidermist’s, glanced in as he passed, and beheld the pride and joy of the taxidermist’s heart—­a magnificent and really well-mounted boa-constrictor, and fell shrieking, struggling, and screaming in the gutter.

That night Damocles de Warrenne, ill, incoherent, and delirious, passed in a cell, on a charge of drunk and disorderly and disgracing the Queen’s uniform.

Mr. Levi Solomonson had not disgraced it, of course.

“If we were not eating this excellent bread-and-dripping and drinking this vile tea, what would you like to be eating and drinking, Matthewson?” asked Trooper Nemo (formerly Aubrey Roussac d’Aubigny of Harrow and Trinity).

“Oh, ... a little real turtle,” said Dam, “just a lamina of sole frite, a trifle of vol an vent a la financiere, a breast of partridge, a mite of pate de fois gras, a peach a la Melba, the roe of a bloater, and a few fat grapes—­”

“’Twould do.  ’Twould pass,” sighed Trooper Burke, and added, “I would suggest a certain Moselle I used to get at the Byculla Club in Bombay, and a wondrous fine claret that spread a ruby haze of charm o’er my lunch at the Yacht Club of the same fair city.  A ’Mouton Rothschild something,’ which was cheap at nine rupees a small bottle on the morrow of a good day on the Mahaluxmi Racecourse.” (It was strongly suspected that Trooper Burke had worn a star on his shoulder-strap in those Indian days.)