It was a piece of insular facetiousness on my part which discovered him; for one of the articles of every Briton's faith is that so long as he speaks in English he can safely say what he likes to these foreign beggars. Therefore, as this particular Portuguese had nipped my ticket every morning for over a week, with never more than a murmured "Com licenÇa, senhor," when he avoided my outstretched legs, I thought our acquaintance had lasted long enough to warrant my chaffing him—in English, of course.

"Morning, Pedro!" I remarked, cheerfully, as I handed him my ticket; "I'm quite getting to like the look of your ugly face, d'you know?"

The ticket-man gave me a quick glance.

"The pleasure is mutual, sir," he replied, quietly, speaking with a slight Scotch accent; and then, with his usual "Com licenÇa," reached over for the rest of the tickets.

The other fellows, season-ticket holders on that line, burst out laughing, and before I had time to realise the exact size of fool I'd made of myself, the man had opened the door, and was making his way along the foot-board to the next carriage. I jumped to the window and looked after him, just in time to catch a slight smile on his wooden face as he disappeared into the compartment.

"Well, I'm blessed!" I remarked to the others. "The fellow understands English."

"Yes. Most Scotchmen do, you know," was the reply; and I felt smaller than ever.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Don't know. Calls himself Judson, but probably was christened something else. He has been on the Lisbon-Cintra line for the last ten years, and that's pretty nearly all that is known about him. Half a score of fellows have tried at different times to get him to talk, but he sees through it, and closes up like an oyster."

"Where does he live?" I asked; for this sounded interesting.

"You'll have to get him to tell you himself; nobody else knows. Bet you twenty mil you don't draw him."

"Done!" said I, and booked the bet.

Now, the more I allowed my thoughts to dwell on the square, determined-looking features of the man, the more angry I grew with myself because I could not put a name to the face. The fellow haunted me the whole morning, and as the dilatoriness of the Portuguese Government officials, with whom I was trying to negotiate a sugar concession, gave me plenty of time for reflection, by the time I had become thoroughly tired of hanging round the Cortes, and had made up my mind to having to wait once more for the interminable Portuguese "to-morrow," I was also quite ready for another interview with "Judson." I set off, therefore, for the station, and took my ticket to Cintra.

What was the man's real name? And where had I seen that rather wooden smile before?

Ten years on the Lisbon-Cintra line, they say. Then I must have been quite a kid when I met him in England, if I ever did meet him. Ten years—by Jove! can it be Farquhar? Six feet two, determined features, wooden smile—it is Farquhar! Wonder how Nellie Conyers will take this when I tell her. Doubtful, very! But on second thoughts, shall I tell her? H-m! I don't know.

The point is that, although Mrs. Conyers is my second cousin, she is also a young widow, unencumbered; and I am rather afraid of her. She was engaged to Farquhar before she met Conyers, but the match was broken off because of some Indian scandal or other; something about the Viceroy's Cup, I think. Farquhar had a horse entered, which won when it shouldn't, or lost when it shouldn't—I forget which. Anyway, there was unpleasantness, and Farquhar threw up his commission, and offered to release Nellie Vincent from her engagement. She took him at his word, and married the next "eligible" who came along—Amos Conyers, to wit, a Yorkshire wool-comber, since deceased. All things considered, I thought perhaps I wouldn't tell Mrs. Conyers.

But if Cousin Nellie inspired me with awe, the Cintra ticket-examiner didn't; so when the door of the compartment (which, as luck would have it, I had to myself after we left Rio de Mouro) suddenly opened, and the familiar "Com licenÇa" heralded the fact that my legs were as usual in the way, I was prepared.

"Sir," I said, "I was rude to you this morning, and I wish to apologise."

He looked hard at me for a moment; then smiled, and shrugged his shoulders slightly, Portuguese fashion.

"The senhor is pleased to make fun of me," he answered, quietly.

"No; I'm in dead earnest," I declared. "But whose pardon have I the honour to beg—Captain Ian Farquhar's, shall I say?"

He turned on me at once, and the ticket-nippers fell out of his twitching fingers and clattered on the floor unheeded.

"Who told you that name?" he demanded, fiercely.

"Nellie Vincent," said I, and watched him narrowly, "used to speak pretty frequently about a certain Ian Farquhar—that is to say, before she became Mrs. Conyers, of course—and I thought——"

"Who are you?" he interrupted, with a menacing gesture which was all English, "and what do you know about Nellie Vincent?"

"As much as a not very distant relative may know," I answered, suavely. "Can I take her any message from Captain Farquhar?"

He turned sharply round, and I wondered whether he was going to embrace me or assault me. As a matter of fact, he did neither.

"Go to the devil," he snarled savagely in my face, and then, opening the door with a jerk, swung himself out on to the foot-board.

Now, we were on an incline, and going, for a Portuguese local train, really fast. Under ordinary circumstances, therefore, he would have waited till we slowed down at the station before venturing to pass on to the next carriage; but a badly surprised man forgets that he's got a neck to be broken.

"I've a notion I shall win those twenty mil," said I to myself, as I picked up the nippers he had dropped. "Anyhow, the Captain will have to return for this little implement."

The engine gave a couple of piercing shrieks; the guard leaned out and blew his penny trumpet; the station-master's bell could be heard ringing furiously ahead of us; and all this unnecessary noise merely meant that we were entering Cintra station. Just before we came to a standstill, Farquhar paid me the visit I was waiting for.

"My nippers," he explained, nervously, poking his head in at the window and peering about; "I think I dropped them."

I handed the tool to him. He took it, and then, with breathless haste, jerked out, "Look here, I'm off duty at eight. Come to my shanty if you can—pink-washed hut just below the Quinta da Bella Vista. Sorry I was rude to you just now."

Then he dropped off the foot-board, and the train pulled up at the platform with a clumsy jerk.

"Yes," remarked Farquhar, contentedly, "you're right. There are uglier spots in the world than this."

Then he blew a couple of smoke-rings, and watched them dissolve slowly in the still air.

The sun was just disappearing behind the club-shaped kitchen chimneys of the Moorish palace, and the long, doleful "Wo-o-o-a-aw" of the donkey men, who were bringing a party of Spanish tourists back from Montserrat and the Cork Convent, floated across the lemons and roses of the quintas below, and died away in the silences above us, smothered by the heavy curtain of pine needles.

"Does it satisfy you?" I asked, quietly.

"What—the scenery?"

"No, I don't mean that—you'd be a captious brute if it didn't—but the life."

The man's brow contracted ominously, and he threw away his cigar with unnecessary energy.

"You're used to something better, you see," I insinuated.

"And I am used to this," he replied, shortly.

Then he dropped his chin on to his chest and looked at me from under his brows.

"See here," he said, with cold emphasis. "I guess what you're driving at, and I tell you I don't like it. You say you are Nellie Vincent's cousin, and that you remember me in the old days. Well, you may; but I don't remember you, and I don't recognise your right to criticise me."

"Really," I began, "I have no wish——"

"Good heavens, man!" he interrupted, and pointed excitedly to the panorama around us. "Look about you, and say if you know a better place for a poor devil of a Pariah to bury himself in! My hut is comfortable; the scenery is perfect; that caldeirada of mullet and vegetables, of which you were pleased to approve just now, is a luxury within reach of even a railwayman's wage, and the cigar you are smoking is one of a case of eight thousand Villar y Villars which I brought with me when I turned hermit. I don't smoke more than one a day on an average, so if you calculate you'll find there are still over four thousand left."

He got up, and paced the gravel aggressively.

"Do you ever see an English paper?" I asked, with sudden recollections of an obituary notice.

The furrow on the ticket-nipper's brow smoothed itself out; his movements lost their irritable jerkiness, and when he spoke the grating snarl had gone from his voice.

"Yes," he answered, quietly, "I do. I know that my father is dead, and that I can call myself Sir Ian Farquhar if I choose to. That's what you mean, isn't it? I got a month's holiday and went and laid a wreath on the old man's grave."

There was a catch in Farquhar's voice as he told me this, and somehow I did not care to break the pause which followed.

"But," he went on again, "what should I gain by going home now? My title, and the grouse moors which go with it, would gain me friends—of a sort. I know that; but do you imagine that it would be forgotten for a moment that I had to resign my commission because of a hocussed racehorse? Would Mrs. Conyers, for instance, allow me to visit her?"

"Yes," I answered, decidedly; but I wasn't sure.

"You think so? You don't know her, then; and if she would I shouldn't go—can't you see that?"

"I don't see why you shouldn't," I contended.

Sir Ian laughed bitterly as I spoke.

"You don't? No, of course you don't! You've never heard a man call you a cheat and not had the power to call him a liar in return. A few experiences of that sort develop one's shyness, you'd find. I shall never go home till——"

"Till Nellie Conyers asks you to," I interrupted.

"No," he answered, "not that; I stick to possibilities. I was merely going to say that I wouldn't go home until I could give the lie to every man in my old regiment. Looks as if I should stay here some time, doesn't it?"

"You can clear yourself," I suggested.

"No," he retorted, "I can't."

I didn't believe him.

"Look here," I said; "I'm going home next week. Will you give me a brief?"

"What, to vindicate my reputation? Yes, if you don't care about your own. They won't believe you."

"I'll risk that," said I; for I had a notion that my cousin Nellie, at all events, might, perhaps, be convinced.

As soon as possible after my arrival in England, I went and told my tale to Mrs. Conyers. I met her at a crush in Hans Place, and engaged her to sit out three consecutive dances with me. To give me these she had, so she said, to disappoint two very nice boys indeed; but I insisted. My tale would take three dances at least in the telling, and, moreover, it concerned Ian Farquhar; so, with a pout—Nellie's pouts were a part of her ordnance, and, of course, suited her—she consented.

As it happened, we sat out not three dances, but five; for after I had said my say, she also had something to tell—and of the two hers was the better tale, for it made Farquhar into a hero.

I knew that Nellie's brother had been a lieutenant in Farquhar's regiment, but I did not know that the responsibility for the foul running in the Viceroy's Cup was conclusively proved to lie between Captain Farquhar and Lieutenant Vincent. Vincent denied it stoutly; Farquhar, engaged to Vincent's sister, said nothing. So Farquhar became the Cintra ticket-nipper, and Vincent remained with his regiment until the native moneylenders made India too hot to hold him. Then he resigned, and, socially speaking, went under.

Nellie had learned the facts from one of her "nice boys," a "sub" who had taken over Vincent's sayce after the smash, and was still too young to know when to hold his tongue. The sayce let out that Vincent Sahib had bribed him to drug the racehorse.

"And so, you see," said Nellie to me, "poor Ian was a hero after all. It was for my sake, you know, that he wouldn't speak."

I said something appropriate.

"Nonsense!" said Nellie, with a blush. "Please ask them to call my carriage; I want to go home. And you might come to-morrow and talk things over with me—and—and—book a passage to Lisbon by the next mail—you'll want it."

"Well, I'm—astonished," said I; but I wasn't.

"My dear fellow," said Farquhar to me, when I visited him again in his Cintra hut, "I don't want to be rude to you, but I'd much rather you let me alone. I've broken with the old life, you see, and you must allow that you are out of place in the new one. You'll pardon my speaking so plainly."

"Sir Ian Farquhar," said I, "light one of those Villar y Villars and sit down and listen to me. After you've heard what I have to say, I'll never visit you again until you ask me."

I told him my tale, and he heard it through without showing by a flicker how it affected him.

"Now," said I, when I had finished, "what are you going to do?"

"Bid you good-night," he answered, shortly. "I work the first train to-morrow."

"Man!" I exclaimed, in amazement, "Nellie Conyers wants you—she sent me to say so."

"Does she? Then she can come and say so herself."

"Oh, come, that's unreasonable," I began; but a flutter of skirts at the door interrupted me.

"I couldn't wait any longer," said my cousin Nellie, pleadingly. "Ian, you'll come back to England with me?"

I picked up my hat and went for a stroll. When I returned the door was closed, and Nellie was waiting outside.

"Don't go in," she commanded. "He sent me out to wait till he'd changed out of his railway clothes. He has hunted an old Poole suit out of his trunk, and is putting it on."