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 Sir Nicolas has engagements in London that month."

"Oh! then you are going back."

"Why, what would we be doing all the winter here in Paris?"

He seemed to think a while over this, taking a drink of the hock and rolling his bleary eyes as though he was looking for some one in the garden. Presently he said;

"Do you like the situation you're in?"

"Oh!" said I, "it's much the same as other situations. Here to-day and gone to-morrow."

"Then you travel a good deal?"

"That's so—but travel or no travel, it's all the same to me."

"Your master seems a pleasant sort of gentleman?"

"I should call him that."

"He's a baronet or something, isn't he?"

"Exactly; he's Sir Nicolas Steele of Castle Rath, County Kerry."

"A generous man, I should say."

I looked at him straight, for I'd read him up by this time.

"It's a cold morning for talking in the open air, sir," says I, and with that I turned on my heel and left him.

Now, though I had taken it coolly enough, a duller head than mine could have seen through the man's talk.