“Perhaps, generally speaking; but every land should have an anthem of its own.  The greatest composition of Beethoven or Wagner will never touch the heart as the ripple of a battle song.”

And when Fitzgerald joined them they were seriously discussing Wagner and his ill-treatment in Munich, and of the mad king of Bavaria.

As she had planned, both men noticed the simplicity of her dress.

“It is because she doesn’t care,” thought Breitmann.

“It is because she knows we don’t care,” thought Fitzgerald.  And he was nearer the truth than Breitmann.

The dinner was pleasant, and there was much talk of travel.  The admiral had touched nearly every port, Fitzgerald had been round three times, and Breitmann four.  The girl experienced a sense of elation as she listened.  She knew most of her father’s stories, but to-night he drew upon a half-forgotten store.  Without embellishment, as if they were ordinary, every-day affairs, they exchanged tales of adventure in strange island wildernesses; and there were lion hunts and man hunts and fierce battles on land and sea.  Never had any story-book opened a like world.  She felt a longing for the Himalayas, the Indian jungles, the low-lying islands of the South Pacific.

So far as the admiral was concerned, he was very well pleased with the new secretary.

Fitzgerald was not asleep.  He had an idea, and he smoked his yellow African gourd pipe till this same idea shaped itself into the form of a resolve.  He laid the pipe on the mantel, turned over the logs—­for the nights were yet chill, and a fire was a comfort—­and raised a window.  He would like to hear some of that tapping in the chimney.  He was fully dressed, excepting that he had exchanged shoes for slippers.

He went out into the corridor.  There was no light under Breitmann’s door.  So much the better; he was asleep.  Fitzgerald crept down the stairs with the caution of a hunter who is trailing new game.  As he arrived at the turn of the first landing, he hesitated.  He could hear the old clock striking off the seconds in the lower hall.  He cupped his ear.  By George!  Joining the sharp monotony of the clock was another sound, softer, intermittent.  He was certain that it came from the library.  That door was never closed.  Click-click!  Click-click!  The mystery was close at hand.

He moved forward.  He wanted to get as close as possible to the fireplace.  He peered in.  The fire was all but dead; only the corner of a log glowed dully.  Suddenly, the glow died, only to reappear, unchanged.  This phenomena could be due to one thing, a passing of something opaque.  Fitzgerald had often seen this in camps, when some one’s legs passed between him and the fire.  Some one else was in the room.  With a light bound, he leaped forward, to find himself locked in a pair of arms no less vigorous than his own.

And even in that lively moment he remembered that the sound in the chimney went on!