should be "put next" the business which produced such amazing returns. Reggie had waited to hear more but, with amusing inconsequence, Archy had changed the subject, relapsed indeed into a tantalizing dalliance with a lady friend. But to-night, in sober earnest, for Archy had had little besides a bottle of gin since rising in the morning, he proposed that they should join a business friend of his, and have a quiet little dinner somewhere. Mr. Spokesly was all eyes, all ears, all intelligent receptiveness. He enquired who the business friend might be, and Archy, who had his own enthusiasms, let himself go. His friend, Jack Miller, had been out there for years. With Swingles, the ship-chandlers. Occupied, Archy surmised, a very high position there. Had worked himself up. Plenty of skippers did business with Swingles simply because Jack was there. If he liked to leave, Archy hadn't any doubt he'd take a good half of Swingles' business with him. Knew all the languages, French, Greek, Arabic, and so on. Kept his own hours, went in and out as he liked. Archy only wished he had Jack Miller's job! Mr. Spokesly listened greedily. As they debouched upon the great Place Mohammed Aly, with its myriads of lights and sounds, its illuminated Arabic night signs, its cracking of whips and tinkling of bells and glasses, its gorgeous, tessellated platoons of café tables, he took a deep breath. He felt he was upon the threshold of a larger life, inhaling a more invigorating air. It seemed to him he was about to quit the dreary humdrum world of watch-keeping and monthly wages for a region where dwelt those happy beings who had no fixed hours, who made money, who had it "to burn," as they say. And Jack Miller, whom they met that night and many nights after, was a magnificent accessory of the illusion. He was a dapper little man in fashionable clothes, a runner for a local ship-chandler, who introduced them to half-a-dozen ship-captains of a certain type, and together they went round the vast tenderloin district of the city. Mr. Spokesly was conscious of a grand exaltation during the day when he recalled his nightly association with these gentlemen. There were others, dark-skinned Greeks and Levantines in long-tasselled fezes, who joined them in their pursuit of pleasure in the great blocks of buildings behind the Boulevard Ramleh and their jaunts, in taxicabs, to San Stefano. They were, as Archy put it, over whiskey and soda in his cabin, gentlemen worth knowing, men with property and businesses. And it was one of these, one evening on the balcony of the Casino at San Stefano, who mentioned casually that he often did business with Saloniki and that if Mr. Spokesly ever had any little things to dispose of on his return, he would be glad to make him an offer, privately, of course. He often did this with Mr. Bates, he added, to their mutual satisfaction. Mr. Spokesly was charmed.