The two men, for lack of any other distraction, watched the pedestrian draw near. He turned out to be a giant of a man; and had, apparently, no intention of resting at the inn. The very air of the tall pedestrian was a challenge to the lazy content of the sunlit noon. He was walking at a great pace, his felt hat swinging from his hand. A giant he was: his hair greying: his massive face set with assurance. “By all that’s holy!” gasped the elder of the two observers. A little lean gentleman that was, with a lined face which had been handsome in a striking way but for the haggard marks of the dissipations of a man of the world. He had only one arm, and that added a curiously flippant air of devilry to his little, lean, sardonic person. “Puce!” yelled the other, a young man with a chubby, good-humoured face. “Puce, you silly old ass! Come here at once!” The giant swung round at the good-natured cry, stared at the two smiling men. Then the massive face broke into the old, genial smile by which his friends had always known and loved the gentleman from America, and he came towards them with hand outstretched. “Well, boys!” laughed Mr. Puce. “This is one big surprise. But it’s good to see you again, I’ll say that.” “The years have rolled on, Puce, the years have rolled on,” sighed Quillier in his tired way, but warmly enough he shook the gentleman from America with his one hand. “They certainly have!” said Mr. Puce, mopping his brow and smiling down on the two. “And by the look of that arm, Quillier, I’ll say you’re no stranger to war.” “Sit down, old Puce, and have a drink,” laughed Kerr-Anderson. Always gay, was Kerr-Anderson. But the gentleman from America seemed, as he stood there, uncertain. He glanced down the way he had come. Quillier, watching him, saw that he was fagged out. Eleven years had made a great difference to Mr. Puce. He looked old, worn, a wreck of the hearty giant who was once Howard Cornelius Puce. “Come, sit down, Puce,” he said kindly, and quite briskly, for him. “Do you realise, man, that it’s eleven years since that idiotic night? What are you doing? Taking a walking-tour?” Mr. Puce sat down on the stained bench beside them. His massive presence, his massive smile, seemed to fill the whole air about the two men. “Walking-tour? That is so, more or less,” smiled Mr. Puce; and, with a flash of his old humour: “I want to tell you boys that I am the daughter of the King of Egypt, but I am dressed as a man because I am travelling _incognito_. Eleven years is it, since we met? A whale of a time, eleven years!” “Why, there’s been quite a war since then,” chuckled Kerr-Anderson. “But still that night seems like last night. I _am_ glad to see you again, old Puce! But, by Heaven, we owe you one for giving us the scare of our lives! Don’t we, Quillier?”