"Bilked ’im," he gasped when he got his breath again, half-awed at the ease with which he found himself in the strangely unfamiliar streets. At the corner of the side-street he turned and looked back at the grim wall. In the signal-tower that loomed above it into the murky sky the yeoman on watch had just tapped the key of the flashing lamp to test the circuit. To Ivor it seemed as if Fate had winked at him, solemnly and portentously. * * * * * Ivor pushed through the swing-doors of the "Crossed Killicks" and looked hastily round the bar. "’Ullo!...." he ejaculated blankly. "W’ere’s Bella?" The girl behind the counter, a short, stout woman in a purple plush bodice, tossed her head. "’Er a’ternoon orf," she explained tartly. "Aye, but—w’ere’s she gorn?" "Walkin’ out with a Blue Marine. ’Ippodrome, I think, they was goin’." Ivor sat down and fumbled blindly in the lining of his cap for his pipe. Save for a spot of colour on either cheek-bone, his face was an ugly grey. "Fine upstanding feller, ’e was too," added the barmaid, weighing Ivor in the balance of comparison, and finding him somewhat wanting. Ivor nodded dully, and for a while examined with apparently absorbed interest an advertisement on the wall opposite. Passion surged through him in waves that made the skin of his forehead tingle. So she’d bilked him after all: given him the go-by for a Blue Marine! Ivor knew him too, ... had once even stood him a drink.... The Adam’s-apple in his throat worked like a piston. Presently the girl behind the bar looked up from her occupation of drying glasses and eyed him curiously; but all she saw was a small dark man, who sucked hard at an empty pipe, one fist clenched tightly in his trousers pocket, staring hard at an advertisement for somebody’s whisky. At length, out of the chaos of his thoughts, two courses of action took shape and presented themselves for consideration. One was to bash the Blue Marine into irrecognition; the other was to get mercifully drunk as soon as possible. The Blue Marine, Ivor remembered, scaled a matter of fourteen stone, so he chose the latter alternative, and for thirty-six hours Oblivion, as understood by men of His Majesty’s Forces, received him into her arms. *III.* "Did remain absen’ over leave thirty-six tours, under haggravated circumstances," declaimed the Master-at-Arms.