“I see to that. I get a couple of hours on the links every day and I never play with a medical,--get quite outside it all, you know. Then I may speak to Alma, Colonel? She knows, of course, but we’ve never said very much.” “Yes, my lad,--whenever you can catch her. She’s an elusive creature these days.” “I’ll catch her all right,” said Con, all abeam. The other young people had just returned from their tournament and were discussing points over the tea-cups. “Hello! Here’s old Con,” shouted Noel, and they all jumped up and gave him merry welcome. Vic inquired earnestly after the state of his brain; and satisfied on that head, they poured out their own latest news. “Vic and I won,” chortled Honor. “6-5, 6-4, against No and Gregor McLean.” “Oh well,” explained Noel. “If you’d been round the links in the morning you wouldn’t have been half so nimble on your pins.” “Bit heavy, I suppose?” said the Colonel. “Heavy wasn’t the word for it, sir, and a beastly gusty wind that upset all one’s calculations. However, I licked old Greg into a cocked hat and he’s no end of a nib with the sticks; so that’s one to me. Pick up any lunch scores as you came along, Con?” “Sorry, old man! I didn’t. I was thinking of other things,” and the Colonel nodded weightily, and said, “In a week from now we’ll all have other things to think about, I’m afraid.” V Ray Luard’s quest was one in which the soul of any man might well rejoice. He was flying, like a knight of old,--though as to ways and means in very much better case,--to the rescue of his lady-love from possibilities of trouble. More than that he did not look for, and possible difficulties and delays weighed little with him. He reached Flushing about seven in the evening after a gusty passage which did not trouble him, and was at Cologne in the early hours of the morning. But after that his progress was slow and subject to constant, exasperating, and inexplicable delays. He had secured a berth in the sleeper and took fullest advantage of it. But all night long, as he slept the troubled sleep of the sleeping-car, he was dully conscious of long intervals when the metronomic nimble of the wheels died away, and the unusual silence was broken only by the creaking complaints of the carriage-fittings and the long-drawn snores and sharper snorts and grunts of his companions in travel. The train was crowded and every bunk was occupied. The occupant of the one above him was so violently stertorous that Ray feared he was in for a fit, and did his best to save him from it by energetic thumps from below. But the only result was a momentary pause of surprise in the strangling solo up above and the immediate resumption of it with renewed vigour, and Ray gave it up, and drew the bed clothes over his ears, and left him to his fate.