BY THE SAME AUTHOR _A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH_ _THE ROGUE'S MARCH_ _IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER_ _MY LORD DUKE_ _YOUNG BLOOD_ SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN BY E. W. HORNUNG NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1898 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK In Memoriam Matris CONTENTS PAGE KENYON'S INNINGS 1 A LITERARY COINCIDENCE 40 "AUTHOR! AUTHOR!" 71 THE WIDOW OF PIPER'S POINT 87 AFTER THE FACT 104 THE VOICE OF GUNBAR 151 THE MAGIC CIGAR 168 THE GOVERNESS AT GREENBUSH 186 A FAREWELL PERFORMANCE 234 A SPIN OF THE COIN 244 THE STAR OF THE _GRASMERE_ 256 KENYON'S INNINGS I Kenyon had been more unmanageable than usual. Unsettled and excitable from the moment he awoke and remembered who was coming in the evening, he had remained in an unsafe state all day. That evening found him with unbroken bones was a miracle to Ethel his sister, and to his great friend John, the under-gardener. Poor Ethel was in charge; and sole charge of Kenyon, who was eleven, was no light matter for a girl with her hair still down. Her brother was a handful at most times; to-day he would have filled some pairs of stronger hands than Ethel's. They had begun the morning together, with snob-cricket, as the small boy called it; but Kenyon had been rather rude over it, and Ethel had retired. She soon regretted this step; it had made him reckless; he had spent the most dangerous day. Kenyon delighted in danger. He had a mania for walking round the entire premises on the garden wall, which was high enough to kill him if he fell, and for clambering over the greenhouses, which offered a still more fascinating risk. Not only had he done both this morning, he had gone so far as to straddle a gable of the house itself, shrieking good-tempered insults at Ethel, who appealed to him with tears and entreaties from the lawn below. Ethel had been quite disabled from sitting at meat with him; and in the afternoon he had bothered the gardeners, in the potting-shed, to such an extent that his friend John had subsequently refused to bowl to him. In John's words Master Kenyon had been a public nuisance all day--though a lovable one--at his very worst he was that. He had lovable looks, for one thing. It was not the only thing. The boy had run wild since his young mother's death. There were reasons why he should not go to school at present. There were reasons why he should spend the long summer days