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Rh your Sydney yet, or you would be like me, and think nothing of such trifles. I was eating my dinner, as I say, when I heard him at his work; unfortunately I let him hear me; still, I chased him out of that and some way down the road, and could have caught him if I hadn’t preferred to come back and finish my dinner. I played a better knife and fork for the exercise.”

“And you gave chase unarmed?” said Tom.

“To be sure, except with these arms,” responded Daintree with equal truth and bravado, as he tapped an enviable biceps. “Your man of muscle has no business with any other, if he but knew how to use his hands as I do. It would have gone hard with our friend, I promise you, if I had laid hold of him!”

“I wish you had,” said Tom. “The blackguard must have dogged you from the bank, and hung about the Pulteney both times you were there.” Tom paused. His heart was back at the hotel, and his gratitude to the man was once more repelling his jealousy and distrust of the bridegroom, when a second thought sprang from his words. “By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I wonder whether it was the fellow who turned up on the beach almost at the instant we went down!”

“What!” cried Daintree. “Did you see him?”

“Yes, I caught a glimpse of somebody as we heeled over. Depend upon it that’s our man!”

Daintree turned nasty in a moment.

“Why depend upon it?” he snapped. “Did you see the man’s face? Would you know him again? Oh, you wouldn’t; then let me recommend you not to make a fool of yourself, my good fellow. Nobody but a fool would connect the two men.”

His ill-temper was inexplicable; yet to treat an attempt