href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@11572@[email protected]#CHAPTER_XX" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">NEENAH

ILLUSTRATIONS

"He saw the Princess for the first time that afternoon"

"'Don't you intend to present me to Lady Deppingham?'"

"'No,' she said to herself, 'I told him I was keeping them for him'"

"He felt that Genevra was still looking into his eyes"

THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S

CHAPTER I

THE LATE MR. SKAGGS

The death of Taswell Skaggs was stimulating, to say the least, inapplicable though the expression may seem.

He attained the end of a hale old age by tumbling aimlessly into the mouth of a crater on the island of Japat, somewhere in the mysterious South Seas. The volcano was not a large one and the crater, though somewhat threatening at times, was correspondingly minute, which explains—in apology—to some extent, his unfortunate misstep.

Moreover, there is but one volcano on the surface of Japat; it seems all the more unique that he, who had lived for thirty years or more on the island, should have stepped into it in broad daylight, especially as it was he who had tacked up warning placards along every avenue of approach.

Inasmuch as he was more than eighty years old at the time, it would seem to have been a most reprehensible miscalculation on the part of the Grim Reaper to have gone to so much trouble.

But that is neither here nor there.

Taswell