"Precisely!" agreed Parslewe, drily. "It was here in this very room, at that table, that I had the honour of meeting Sperrigoe."
"When?" demanded Madrasia.
"Oh! Some time ago," he answered, indifferently.
"Then, if you'd been at home when he called at Kelpieshaw the other morning, he'd have known you?" said Madrasia, giving me a kick under the table. "Of course he would, as you'd met before."
"He might have known my face," answered Parslewe. "But he wouldn't have known my name; at least, I mean, he never knew my name when I met him here. We chanced to meet here, as strangers, happening to dine together at the same table; we smoked a cigar together afterwards, and chatted about the old town. I heard his name, but he never heard mine; to him I was a mere bird-of-passage. I guess," he went on, with one of his cynical laughs, "old Sperrigoe would have been vastly astonished if he'd found me in at Kelpieshaw and had recognised in me the stranger of the Crown!"
