"Oh, please don't hurt him!" I broke out piteously. "I'm so sorry if he's bitten you, but he's my little dog, and he thought it his duty." "Hello!" said the stranger, advancing a step or two, and still holding Paudeen. "Are you one of the family portraits, or do you live in mid-air?" As he stood blinking towards me in the darkness, plainly not seeing me, I burst out laughing. It was partly relief, because the minute he spoke I knew he was a gentleman and no tramp, and partly because it was so funny that I should have addressed him out of the ceiling, so to speak. He put down Paudeen very gently, saying: "Now, little chap, don't nip me again. Honour bright!" I saw that Paudeen began to wag his tail as if his doubts had been set at rest. Then the stranger deliberately took off the lamp-shade, and, lifting the lamp, advanced towards me, holding it so that he could see me. I felt rather absurd all at once, and cried out: "I'm only sitting on the library steps reading. Please put down the lamp, and I'll come down." But he lifted the lamp instead, and stared at me attentively. As he took in my abashed features he uttered a long whistle. Then he put down the lamp and said deliberately: "The last time I saw you I picked you out of a ditch. And now I find you sitting on the top of a ladder." I uttered a shriek of delight, and utterly forgetting myself and my shyness I scrambled down the steps anyhow, upsetting several books as I did so, and caught the stranger by the two hands. "Oh, you are Lance!" I cried, "Lance come back, thank God! The General will die of joy." "We mustn't let him do that, little girl. That's why I came prospecting by the back-door. I did not know how to approach him. Is he well?" "He will be quite well now that he has you. I am expecting him every minute. He must not see you till I have told him you are here." "But who are you, you mysterious child? I only know you as the little girl of Annagassan Races. How do you come to be here, and looking after my father?" So recalled to myself, I blushed, and let his hands, which unconsciously I had been holding, drop. "I am Hilda Brandon," I said, "and your father is our dear friend." "Whew!" said he with an air of comic perplexity. "Then I suppose you are grown-up and a young lady, and I have been taking you for a child and a peasant. Why didn't you undeceive me that day long ago?" "You never asked me." "But you knew I didn't like your vanishing into thin air. Still, I admit that I was an unready fellow." "And where have you been all those years?" "Since you saw me?" "Since you left your father." "The greater part of the time in a tower in the hill-country above the Khyber Pass, a prisoner, and expecting my quietus every day." "And you escaped?"