will obey orders, who like orders, in fact, and whose proud subservience sends a thrill of supreme pleasure through the minds of their commanders. They were soon engaged.

There was not as much difference between this courtship and that of an average coal or ice man as one might suppose. Mr. Spokesly's emotional output so far had been, if I may say so, limited. But this was all grist to Ada's mill. It was put down to the strong, deep, English sailor nature, just as his primitive methods of wooing were credited to the bluff English sailor nature. She was under an illusion all the time. All that her married sister could say was useless. The married sister was married to a man who was a woman-tamer himself in a way. He was now at the Front, where he had won a medal for extraordinary bravery, and his wife was dreading the day of his return. She used the interval of peace and quiet to warn her sister. But who can fight against an illusion? The married sister had to shrug her shoulders, and point out that Mr. Spokesly was throwing himself away on a silly chit. She admired Mr. Spokesly herself, to tell the truth, and liked to have him in the house, where he was often to be found during his six weeks' vacation. It was she who told him his was "a man's work" in a low contralto voice with a thrill in it. This was really unfair to the husband in Flanders who had displayed extraordinary bravery in holding an isolated post for goodness knows how many hours. It would not do to assert that Mr. Spokesly ever played with the idea of consoling a possible widow who already admired him. He had not sufficient imagination for this. And Ada herself was quite able to hold up her end. She made Mr. Spokesly feel not only great, but good. It was she who led him to see where his weakness lay, a success possible only to a clever girl. Unconscious of her promptings, he came to the conclusion that, to do himself justice, he must make an effort and "improve his education." When he heard the sisters rattling away in a foreign tongue he made a mental note that "he must rub up his French." The London School of Mnemonics, however, did the trick. It was just what he wanted. This school had a wonderful system of memory-training which was endorsed by kings and emperors, merchant princes and famous mezzo-sopranos. By means of this system, learned in twelve lessons, you trebled your intellectual power, quadrupled your earning power, and quintupled your general value to yourself and to the world. The system was comprised in twelve books of aphorisms, slim volumes in gray-green paper covers, daintily printed and apparently addressed straight to Mr. Spokesly's heart. First, he was told, he was capable of anything. He knew that, and with an almost physical feeling of pleasure he read on. Second, came a little story about a celebrated philosopher. Mr. Spokesly was charmed.

It must not be supposed, however, that this was all bunkum to Mr. Spokesly. It was, on the contrary, deadly earnest. Like many Englishmen of his day, he knew there was something wrong with him. He was aware of people in the world who used their brains and held clear notions about things and ideas, very much as a man groping along a foggy street is aware of a conversazione in one of the mansions. To him the London School of Mnemonics was a sound commercial proposition. In twelve lessons, by correspondence, they offered to develop his memory, stimulate his will power, and increase his salary. He had picked up the first half-dozen pamphlets in his fiancée's home. The husband of the married sister had taken the course as far as Number Six, which was: "How to Dominate Your Friends," with a chatty essay on Hypnotism and Matrimony, before leaving for Flanders and glory. Mr. Spokesly read them with an avidity unknown to him since he had spent a month in London many years before studying for his master's license. He felt on the highroad to success. He joined the London School of Mnemonics. He bought an engagement ring for Ada and a handsome bracelet for the married sister. He left them for a while, he said, "to join up." He meant to do it, too, for there is something pathetically appealing in the atmosphere of late autumn in England. It goes to the heart. It is not quite so piercing a call as the early spring, when one's very soul goes out in a mystical passionate union with the spirit of the land, but it is very strong, and Mr. Spokesly, without understanding it, felt the appeal. But at Paddington he stopped and had a drink. For all his years at sea, he was a Londoner at heart. He spoke the atrocious and barbarous jargon of her suburbs, he snuffed the creosote of her wooden streets and found it an admirable apératif to his London beer. And while the blowsy spirit of London, the dear cockney-hearted town, ousted the gentler shade of England, Mr. Spokesly reflected that neither the army nor the navy would have any use for a man of commanding powers, a man whose will and memory had been miraculously developed. The army would not do, he was sure. The navy would probably put him in charge of a tug; for Mr. Spokesly had no illusions as to the reality of the difficulties of life in his own sphere. And he had been long enough at one thing to dread the wrench of beginning at the bottom somewhere else. This is the tragic side of military service in England, for most Englishmen are not adaptable. Mr. Spokesly, for example, had gone to sea at the age of twelve. Unless he won a lottery prize he would be going to sea at seventy, if he lived so long. So he reflected, and the upshot was that he applied—quite humbly, for he had not as yet developed any enormous will power—and secured a billet as second officer on the Tanganyika. He told his people and Ada that there was "a chance of a command," which of course was perfectly true. "It is a man's work," she thrilled softly, echoing her sister, and she closed her eyes to enjoy the vision of him, strong in character, large in talent, irresistible in will power, commanding amid storms and possibly even shot and shell....

Having kept the middle watch, which is from twelve to four, Mr. Spokesly was sitting in his cabin abaft the bridge of the Tanganyika, his feet in a white-enamelled bucket of hot water, contemplating the opposite bulkhead. He was thinking very hard, according to the System of the London School of Mnemonics. The key of this system was simplicity itself. You wanted to remember something which you had forgotten. Very well; you worked back on the lines of a dog following a scent. From what you were thinking at the present moment to what you were thinking when you came in the door, which would lead you by gentle gradations back to the item of which you were in search. Very simple. Unfortunately, Mr. Spokesly, in the course of these retrograde pilgrimages, was apt to come upon vast and trackless oceans of oblivion, bottomless gulfs of time in which, as far as he could recall, his intellectual faculties had been in a state of suspended animation. The London School of Mnemonics did not seem to allow sufficiently for the bridging of these gaps. It is true they said in Lesson Three, with gentle irony, Remember the chain of ideas is often faulty; there may be missing links. Mr. Spokesly, who on this occasion was determined to remember what he was thinking of at the moment when the Old Man spoke sharply behind him and made him jump, was of the opinion that it was the chain that was often missing and that all he could discover were a few odd links! He lifted one foot out of the grateful warmth and felt the instep tenderly, breathing hard, with his tongue in one corner of his mouth, as his mind ran to and fro nosing at the closed doors of the past. What was he thinking of? He remembered it attracted him strangely, had given him a feeling of pleasant anticipation as of a secret which he could unfold at his leisure. It was ... it was.... He put his foot into the water again and frowned. He had been thinking of Ada, he recalled——Ah! Now he was on the track of it. He had been thinking not of her but