"Are you drunk?" inquired the Law, kindly.

"No," said the Saint. "British Constitution. Truly rural. The Leith police dismisseth us. ... No, I'm not drunk. But I'm thinking of pos­sible accidents. So would you just note that I'm going into that house up there—number 90— perfectly sound and sane? And I shan't stay more than half an hour at the outside—voluntarily. So if I'm not out here again at two-thirty, you can walk right in and demand the body. Au revoir, sweet­heart. ..."

And the Saint smiled beatifically, hitched himself off his gold-mounted stick, adjusted the rakish tilt of his hat, and calmly resumed his stroll and his song, while the Law stared blankly after him.

"Groom in dreary dungeon lying, Groom as good as dead, or dying, For a pretty maiden sighing— Pretty maid of seventeen! Seven-seven-seventeen!"

"Blimey," said the Law, blankly.

But the Saint neither heard nor cared what the Law said. He passed on, swinging his stick, into his adventure.

2

MEET THE SAINT.

His godfathers and his godmothers, at his baptism, had bestowed upon him the name of Simon Templar; but that coincidence of initials was not the only reason for the nickname by which he was far more widely known. One day, the story of how he came by that nickname may be told: it is a good story, in its way, though it goes back to the days when the Saint was nineteen, and almost as respectable as he looked. But the name had stuck. It was inevitable that it should stick, for obviously it had been destined to him from the beginning. And in the ten years that had followed his second and less godly baptism, he had done his very best to live up to that second name—according to his lights. But you may have heard the story of the very big man whose friends called him Tiny.