And from Southampton a man can 'ship himself all aboard of a ship,' like Lord Bateman in the ballad, and go anywhere.

Anywhere, yes!--but in this case I wonder where he will go?
Possibly to America--yet no!--I think not!" And Sir Francis, descending his office stairs, went out into the broad sunshine which flooded the city streets, continuing his inward reverie as he walked,--"I think not.

From what he said the other night, I fancy not even the haunting memory of 'ole Virginny' will draw him back _there_.
'Consider me as lost,' he says.

An odd notion! David Helmsley, one of the richest men in the whole of two continents, wishes to lose himself! Impossible! He's a marked multi-millionaire,--branded with the golden sign of unlimited wealth, and as well known as a London terminus! If he were 'lost' to-day, he'd be found to-morrow.

As matters stand I daresay he'll turn up all fight in a month's time and I need not worry my head any more about him!" With this determination Sir Francis went home to luncheon, and after luncheon duly appeared driving in the Park with Lady Vesey, like the attentive and obliging husband he ever was, despite the boredom which the "Row" and the "Ladies' Mile" invariably inflicted upon him,--yet every now and then before him there rose a mental image of his old friend "King David,"-- grey, sad-eyed, and lonely--flitting past like some phantom in a dream, and wandering far away from the crowded vortex of London life, where his name was as honey to a swarm of bees, into some dim unreachable region of shadow and silence, with the brief farewell: "Consider me as lost!".