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  BY THE SAME AUTHOR


  _A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH_

  _THE ROGUE'S MARCH_

  _IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER_

  _MY LORD DUKE_

  _YOUNG BLOOD_


                         SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN




                         SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN

                           BY E. W. HORNUNG

                   NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

                                 1898




                          COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


                            TROW DIRECTORY
                   PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
                               NEW YORK




                          In Memoriam Matris




                               CONTENTS


                                 PAGE

  KENYON'S INNINGS                  1

  A LITERARY COINCIDENCE           40

  "AUTHOR! AUTHOR!"                71

  THE WIDOW OF PIPER'S POINT       87

  AFTER THE FACT                  104

  THE VOICE OF GUNBAR             151

  THE MAGIC CIGAR                 168

  THE GOVERNESS AT GREENBUSH      186

  A FAREWELL PERFORMANCE          234

  A SPIN OF THE COIN              244

  THE STAR OF THE _GRASMERE_      256




KENYON'S INNINGS


I

Kenyon had been more unmanageable than usual. Unsettled and excitable
from the moment he awoke and remembered who was coming in the evening,
he had remained in an unsafe state all day. That evening found him with
unbroken bones was a miracle to Ethel his sister, and to his great
friend John, the under-gardener. Poor Ethel was in charge; and sole
charge of Kenyon, who was eleven, was no light matter for a girl with
her hair still down. Her brother was a handful at most times; to-day he
would have filled some pairs of stronger hands than Ethel's. They had
begun the morning together, with snob-cricket, as the small boy called
it; but Kenyon had been rather rude over it, and Ethel had retired.
She soon regretted this step; it had made him reckless; he had spent
the most dangerous day. Kenyon delighted in danger. He had a mania for
walking round the entire premises on the garden wall, which was high
enough to kill him if he fell, and for clambering over the greenhouses,
which offered a still more fascinating risk. Not only had he done both
this morning, he had gone so far as to straddle a gable of the house
itself, shrieking good-tempered insults at Ethel, who appealed to him
with tears and entreaties from the lawn below. Ethel had been quite
disabled from sitting at meat with him; and in the afternoon he had
bothered the gardeners, in the potting-shed, to such an extent that his
friend John had subsequently refused to bowl to him. In John's words
Master Kenyon had been a public nuisance all day--though a lovable
one--at his very worst he was that. He had lovable looks, for one
thing. It was not the only thing. The boy had run wild since his young
mother's death. There were reasons why he should not go to school at
present. There were reasons why he should spend the long summer days
in the sunshine, and open only the books he cared about, despite the
oddity of his taste in books. He had dark, laughing eyes, and a face
of astonishing brightness and health: astonishing because (as he said)
his legs and arms were as thin as pipe-stems, and certainly looked as
brittle. Kenyon was indeed a delicate boy. He was small and delicate
and weak in everything but spirit. "He has the spirit," said John, his
friend, "of the deuce and all!"

Ethel forgave easily, perhaps too easily, but then she was Kenyon's
devoted slave, who cried about him half the night, and lived for him,
and longed to die for him. Kenyon had toned himself down by tea-time,
and when he sought her then as though nothing had happened, she was
only too thankful to catch his spirit. Had she reminded him of his
behaviour on the roof and elsewhere, he would have been very sorry and
affectionate; but it was not her way to make him sorry, it was her
way to show an interest in all he had to say, and at tea-time Kenyon
was still full of the thing that had excited and unsettled him in the
morning. Only now he was beginning to feel in awe, and the schoolroom
tea had never been a seemlier ceremony.

These children seldom sat at table with their father