outbreak and
repression, and gave his smile a sardonic rigidity. His dark eyes,
that shone with the exaltation of fever, fixed Paul's on entering, and
with the tyranny of an invalid never left them.

"Well, Hathaway?"

With the sound of that voice Paul felt the years slip away, and he was
again a boy, looking up admiringly to the strong man, who now lay
helpless before him. He had entered the room with a faint sense of
sympathizing superiority and a consciousness of having had experience
in controlling men. But all this fled before Colonel Pendleton's
authoritative voice; even its broken tones carried the old dominant
spirit of the man, and Paul found himself admiring a quality in his old
acquaintance that he missed in his newer friends.

"I haven't seen you for eight years, Hathaway. Come here and let me
look at you."

Paul approached the bedside with boyish obedience. Pendleton took his
hand and gazed at him critically.

"I should have recognized you, sir, for all your moustache and your
inches. The last time I saw you was in Jack Hammersley's office. Well,
Jack's dead, and here I am, little better, I reckon. You remember
Hammersley's house?"

"Yes," said Paul, albeit wondering at the question.

"Something like this, Swiss villa style. I remember when Jack put it
up. Well, the last time I was out, I passed there. And what do you
think they've done to it?"

Paul could not imagine.

"Well, sir," said the colonel gravely, "they've changed it into a
church missionary shop and young men's Christian reading-room! But
that's 'progress' and 'improvement'!" He paused, and, slowly
withdrawing his hand from Paul's, added with grim apology, "You're
young, and belong to the new school, perhaps. Well, sir, I've read
your speech; I don't belong to your party--mine died ten years ago--but
I congratulate you. George! Confound it where's that boy gone?"

The negro indicated by this youthful title, although he must have been
ten years older than his master, after a hurried shuffling in the
sitting-room eventually appeared at the door.

"George, champagne and materials for cocktails for the gentleman. The
BEST, you understand. No new-fangled notions from that new barkeeper."

Paul, who thought he observed a troubled blinking in George's eyelid,
and referred it to a fear of possible excitement for his patient, here
begged his host not to trouble himself--that he seldom took anything in
the morning.

"Poss