This is the true account of our raiding the tables at Monte Carlo, done the best way I could.

For the rest, I may just mention poor old Crage died before the end of the month, and by Easter Mr. Thatcher and his mother were safely installed in Wharton Park. Arthur Masters was married to Miss Rybot in April, Forsyth is to do the same to a widow (so he says) in September, Bob Hines is very flourishing with his new gymnasium and swimming-bath—just about finished now, as I write, at the end of June—and Parsons is, I believe, at Southport, parading Lord Street as usual in breeches and gaiters.

As for Brentin, I never saw him again, for by the time Lucy and I had returned from our honeymoon he was back in New York. But I heard from him the other day—a long, rambling letter, in which he told me he had sold the Amaranth to Van Ginkel, for his wife the Princess Danleno, whom he had remarried, and with whom, on separate vessels, he was sailing about the Greek Archipelago—probably in belated search for Bailey Thompson. He concluded by begging me to think of something “snappy” we could do together in the fall, ending finally by writing: “What’s the matter with our going to Egypt and turning the Nile into the Red Sea? A communicative stranger, an Englishman, by his accent, assures me there is just one place where it can be done. Think it over, sonny, and if you decide to do it, count on me. Sincerely, Julius C. Brentin.”

I would write more, only Lucy is calling to me from the hay-field, the other side of the ha-ha of Wharton, where I have come to finish this work in retirement.

As my dear Lucy says, I really am, and always have been, a most extraordinarily lucky man.

THE END