It
was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the Captain's only
intellectual pursuit, for at night the maps were rolled up, and a
green cloth was spread across the table, and there was much company
and popping of soda-bottles, and little heaps of gold and silver were
moved this way and that across the cloth. The smoke drifted out of the
open windows, and the laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly
in the empty street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath them
and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the Captain's guests
to depart. The Lion and the Unicorn were rather ashamed of the scandal
of it, and they were glad when, one day, the Captain went away with
his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high on a four-wheeler.
Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said, "I wish you good luck, sir."
And the Captain said, "I'm coming back a Major, Prentiss." But he
never came back. And one day--the Lion remembered the day very well,
for on that same day the newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street
shouting out the news of "a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms. It
was then that a young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss
went out to meet her and led her up-stairs. They heard him unlock the
Captain's door and say, "This is his room, miss," and after he had
gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre-table. She
stood there a very long time looking slowly about her, and then she
took a photograph of the Captain from the frame on the mantel and
slipped it into her pocket, and when she went out again her veil was
down, and she was crying.
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