“Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled.  ’But surely this is something altogether new, Amenda,’ she said; ’you must have often met soldiers when you’ve been out in London?’

“’Oh, yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand that all right.  It’s when there’s a lot of them all together with a band that I lose my head.’

[Illustration:  “’WHEN THERE’S A LOT OF THEM WITH A BAND, I LOSE MY HEAD.’”]

“‘You don’t know what it’s like, mum,’ she added, noticing Ethelbertha’s puzzled expression; ‘you’ve never had it.  I only hope you never may.’

“We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our stay at Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it.  Every day some regiment or other would march through the town, and at the first sound of its music Amenda would become restless and excited.  The Pied Piper’s reed could not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than did those Sandgate bands the heart of our domestic.  Fortunately, they generally passed early in the morning when we were indoors, but one day, returning home to lunch, we heard distant strains dying away upon the Hythe Road.  We hurried in.  Ethelbertha ran down into the kitchen; it was empty!—­up into Amenda’s bedroom; it was vacant!  We called.  There was no answer.

“‘That miserable girl has gone off again,’ said Ethelbertha.  ’What a terrible misfortune it is for her.  It’s quite a disease.’

“Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her.  I was sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring for a lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I’d rather not.

“Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she would go herself.  I replied that I thought one female member of my household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to.  Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who didn’t want anybody’s love, but wanted to get under the grate after the lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the day-before-yesterday’s newspaper.

[Illustration:  “‘WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?’”]

“In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry of a female in distress.  I listened attentively, and the cry was repeated.  I thought it sounded like Amenda’s voice, but where it came from I could not conceive.  It drew nearer, however, as I approached the bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed, used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room for developing photographs.

“The door was locked.  ‘Is that you, Amenda?’ I cried through the keyhole.