"You--you must not go into her suddenly like this; it might kill her, the shock, don't you know," he found himself saying, in a kind of dream, when the first hurried and incoherent words of greeting had passed between them. Joan was all he was thinking of just then, Joan and the last six months of uninterrupted friendship. Yet Digby was not a bad man, nor a malicious one exactly; but his old affection for his brother, which had always depended more on habit than on natural affinity, had been rudely broken by his supposed death, and it was not easy to revive it again now, nor was it made easier by a concurrence of circumstances which seemed to demand that he should rather have stayed away altogether. Why had Jack chosen this moment to come back? A few years back the musician would have found an occasion for moralizing in the strange conflict of feelings within him. "I--I feel quite queer myself," he said, making an effort to grasp his brother's hand more warmly; "why on earth didn't you let us know that the wrong man--that the other man was killed? You always did imagine that we knew all about you without your troubling to write to us, Jack. Never was so surprised in my life,--delighted, I should say. But what does it all mean?" "Eh, what? Why, don't you see, I thought it was all bally rot to write and explain that they had cabled my name instead of Jack Rackstraw's, because I meant to come over that next mail. And then, when I got another berth offered me with an elegant screw, I reckoned I 'd take it and go on being dead for a space, rather a scheme, don't you twig? And besides, I thought if I lay low till next fall Joan might find out she cared for me a bit more than she calculated, eh? Hasn't it been hard work, though, just sitting tight and not hearing from her! Now, fire yourself, Digby, and let me freeze on to that bell." "But look here, old man," urged the musician, desperately, "let me go in first and explain. You go round to Norah and wait till I come for you. These--these shocks are too much for women; they can't always stand them; women can't, you know. Surely you must see the folly of frightening her--" "You old woman, Digby; what by all that's holy are you playing at? Joan's not that sort; besides, if you'd been away three years, old chap, I guess you'd run the risk of seeing a girl turn pale for you. Eh? So clear out." He twisted the musician round with one touch of his hand, and flew up the steps. But quick as he was, Digby was quicker still, and sprang before him at the top of the steps, panting, and hardly knowing what he did. Jack seized him by the arm in slowly dawning amazement. "'Pon my word, if Joan's half as frightened as you look now, I shall begin to believe it _is_ a shock to meet some one who's supposed to have kicked. You want a drink, old man, and if you don't go and get it now I--"