“I left him in here somewhere,” said the girl, as they set off along a narrow path.  “This was obviously the best place to hide, as, except for Father’s horse, the Home hasn’t had an inmate for two years.  There was some talk of Father making this the headquarters of the Great General Strafe in this campaign, but I don’t believe they have done so yet.”

“Hush!” said Bleak.  “What is that I hear?”

A dull, regular, recurrent sound, a sort of rasping sigh, stole through the thickets.  They both listened in some agitation.

“Sounds a little like an airplane, with one engine missing,” said Bleak.

“Can it be the sea, the surf breaking on the sand?” asked Miss Chuff.

This seemed probable, and they accepted it as such; but as they pushed on through the tangle of saplings and bushes the sound seemed to localize itself on their left.  Bleak peeped cautiously through a leafy screen, and then beckoned the girl to his side.  They looked down into a warm sandy hollow, overgrown and sheltered by a large rhododendron with knotted branches and dry, shiny leaves.  Curled up on the sand bank, in the unconsciously pathetic posture of sheer exhaustion, lay Quimbleton, asleep.  A droning snore buzzed heavily from where he lay.

“Poor Virgil!” said Miss Chuff.  “How tired he looks.”

He did, indeed.  The gray and silver uniform was ragged and soil-stained; his boots were white with dust; his face was unshaved, though a razor lay beside him, and it seemed that he had been trying to strop it on his Sam Browne belt.  His pipe, filled but unlit, had fallen from his weary fingers; beside him was an empty match-box and tragic evidence of a number of unsuccessful attempts to get fire from a Swedish tandsticker.  Crumpled under the elbow of the indomitable idealist was a much-thumbed copy of The Bartender’s Benefactor, or How to Mix 1001 Drinks, in which he had been seeking imaginary solace when he fell asleep.  Near his head ticked a pocket alarm clock, which they found set to gong at two o’clock.

“It seems a shame to wake him,” said Theodolinda.  Her brown eyes liquefied and effervesced with tenderness, until (as Bleak thought to himself) they were quite the color of brandy and soda, without too much soda.

The sleeper stirred, and a radiant smile passed over his unconscious features—­a smile of pure and heavenly beatitude.

“Say when, Jerry,” he murmured.

“He’s dreaming!” cried Theodolinda.  “See, his soul is far away!”

“Two years away,” said Bleak enviously.  “Let him go to it while we reconnoiter.  I believe in the Prevention of Cruelty to Sleep.  He didn’t intend to wake up just yet, you can see by the alarm clock.”

“That’s a good idea,” she agreed.  “I’d like to find out whether we’re in any immediate danger of pursuit.”

They set the basket of food beside Quimbleton, and carefully moved on through the strip of young trees until they neared the broad lawns that surround the Home for Inebriates.  Miss Chuff, spying delicately through a leafy chink, gave a cry of alarm.