w another log on the
fire. Hanway had seen him previously, when Selwyn testified before the
coroner's jury, but to-day he impressed his visitor differently. He
was tall and slight, twenty-five years of age, perhaps, with light
brown hair, sleek and shining and short, a quick blue eye, a fair
complexion with a brilliant flush, and a long mustache. But the
bizarre effect produced by this smiling apparition in the jaws of
death seemed to Hanway's limited experience curiously enhanced by his
attire. Its special peculiarity was an old smoking-jacket, out at the
elbows, ragged at the cuffs, and frayed at the silk collar; Hanway had
never before seen a man wear a red coat, or such foot-gear as the
slipshod embroidered velvet slippers in which he shuffled to a chair
and sat down, tilted back, with his hands in the pockets of his gray
trousers. To be sure, he could but be grave when testifying before a
coroner's jury, but Hanway was hardly prepared for such exuberant
cheerfulness as his manner, his attire, and his face seemed to
indicate.

"Ain't ye sorter lonesome over hyar?" he ventured.

"You bet your sweet life I am," his host replied unequivocally. A
shade crossed his face, and vanished in an instant. "But then," he
argued, "I didn't have such a soft thing where I was. I was a
clerk--that is, a bookkeeper--on a salary, and I had to work all day,
and sometimes nearly all night!"

He belittled his former vocation with airy contempt, as if he did not
yearn for it with every fibre of his being,--its utility, its
competence, its future. The recollection of the very feel of the fair
smooth paper under his hand, the delicate hair-line chirography
trailing off so fast from the swift pen, could wring a pang from him.
He might even have esteemed an oath more binding sworn on a ledger
than on the New Testament.

"And we were a small house, anyway, and the salary was no great
shakes," he continued jauntily, to show how little he had to regret.

"An' now ye ain't got nuthin' ter do but ter read yer book," said the
mountaineer acquiescently, realizing, in spite of his clumsy mental
processes, how the thorn pierced the bosom pressed against it.

Selwyn followed his guest's glance to the shelf of volumes with an
unaffected indifference.

"Yes, but I don't care for it. I wish I did, since I have the time.
But the liking for books has to be cultivated, like a taste for beer;
they are both a deal too sedative for me!" The laugh that