To answer this appeal, Mr Hicks summoned to his aid all the fertility of invention which had made him famous in three continents. He dared not respond by tapping on the table, but from where he sat Cyril could see his knee, while it was hidden from the doctor. Tapping the knee smartly for a dot, and rubbing his finger along softly for a dash, he answered according to the code. “_Be here this afternoon, and when you hear a row down below, watch out for a stone._” Then he turned to the doctor and summed up. “If I can get a message to Lady Usk in time, she shall come up this afternoon, and you will settle with her what arrangements you can make. The Queen will arrive in a week, possibly sooner, and you will keep his Excellency under your care until then? My friend and I must go over to Paranati to bring that poor mad chap, for he ought to be in your charge as soon as possible, and I may be back here almost as soon as Lady Usk, but if I haven’t arrived, you will explain things to her?” The doctor agreed, and he and Mr Hicks parted with the utmost cordiality. The patient Mr Bradwell, reduced to utter silence from having exhausted every possible topic of conversation with his guide, was rescued from the bench in the porter’s lodge where he was meekly smoking, and the two men walked down the hill together. No sooner were they out of earshot of the asylum than Mr Hicks said-- “Now, Eben Bradwell, buck up. You’ve got the very biggest order on hand to-day that you ever had, and don’t you forget it.” “I guess this ain’t the first time I’ve shepherded a lunatic gently into an asylum,” was the reply, in a somewhat injured tone. “Ebenezer,” said Mr Hicks, “that isn’t a circumstance to what I’m going to have you do to-day. You’ll just make the journey to Paranati and back in the quickest time you ever travelled, and you’ll bring along with you the smartest man on board the Bluebird.” “If you air alluding to that unfortunate darkey, I guess----” “I am not alluding to him, but to a smart man that must take his place. I wouldn’t hand over my worst enemy to that smooth-tongued Dago back of us, after the time we’re going to give him to-day. No, sir; what that smart man of yours has to do is to try and give you the slip right at the foot of the hill here, and after a real hard fight, with as much yelling and general violence as he can get in for the money, to lead the chase way back into Dardania. You will have despatched a messenger as soon as he began to be ugly to entreat the doctor to come and try his influence on him, see?” “You want the doctor out of the road for a bit, is that so? Well, sir, I like the notion, and I know the man that’ll tumble to it. We’ll make a real handsome nigger out of him.”