His daughter stared at him.  She was unaware that it was the bootblack at the Carlton he was now quoting.  She began to think he knew more about foreign affairs than she had given him credit for.

“Yes, sir,” he went on; “we’ve got to travel—­fast.  This won’t be a healthy neighborhood for non-combatants when the ruction starts.  I’m going if I have to buy a liner!”

“Nonsense!” said the girl.  “This is the chance of a lifetime.  I won’t be cheated out of it by a silly old dad.  Why, here we are, face to face with history!”

“American history is good enough for me,” he spread-eagled.  “What are you looking at?”

“Provincial to the death!” she said thoughtfully.  “You old dear —­I love you so!  Some of our statesmen over home are going to look pretty foolish now in the face of things they can’t understand I hope you’re not going to be one of them.”

“Twaddle!” he cried.  “I’m going to the steamship offices to-day and argue as I never argued for a vote.”

His daughter saw that he was determined; and, wise from long experience, she did not try to dissuade him.

London that hot Monday was a city on the alert, a city of hearts heavy with dread.  The rumors in one special edition of the papers were denied in the next and reaffirmed in the next.  Men who could look into the future walked the streets with faces far from happy.  Unrest ruled the town.  And it found its echo in the heart of the girl from Texas as she thought of her young friend of the Agony Column “in durance vile” behind the frowning walls of Scotland Yard.

That afternoon her father appeared, with the beaming mien of the victor, and announced that for a stupendous sum he had bought the tickets of a man who was to have sailed on the steamship Saronia three days hence.

“The boat train leaves at ten Thursday morning,” he said.  “Take your last look at Europe and be ready.”

Three days!  His daughter listened with sinking heart.  Could she in three days’ time learn the end of that strange mystery, know the final fate of the man who had first addressed her so unconventionally in a public print?  Why, at the end of three days he might still be in Scotland Yard, a prisoner!  She could not leave if that were true—­she simply could not.  Almost she was on the point of telling her father the story of the whole affair, confident that she could soothe his anger and enlist his aid.  She decided to wait until the next morning; and, if no letter came then—­

But on Tuesday morning a letter did come and the beginning of it brought pleasant news.  The beginning—­yes.  But the end!  This was the letter: 

Dear anxious lady:  Is it too much for me to assume that you have been just that, knowing as you did that I was locked up for the murder of a captain in the Indian Army, with the evidence all against me and hope a very still small voice indeed?