hat sunburn, was Martin's thought as he returned to a study of the face,
narrow, with high cheek-bones and cavernous hollows, and graced with as
delicate and fine an aquiline nose as Martin had ever seen. There was
nothing remarkable about the size of the eyes. They were neither large
nor small, while their color was a nondescript brown; but in them
smouldered a fire, or, rather, lurked an expression dual and strangely
contradictory. Defiant, indomitable, even harsh to excess, they at the
same time aroused pity. Martin found himself pitying him he knew not
why, though he was soon to learn.

"Oh, I'm a lunger," Brissenden announced, offhand, a little later, having
already stated that he came from Arizona. "I've been down there a couple
of years living on the climate."

"Aren't you afraid to venture it up in this climate?"

"Afraid?"

There was no special emphasis of his repetition of Martin's word. But
Martin saw in that ascetic face the advertisement that there was nothing
of which it was afraid. The eyes had narrowed till they were eagle-like,
and Martin almost caught his breath as he noted the eagle beak with its
dilated nostrils, defiant, assertive, aggressive. Magnificent, was what
he commented to himself, his blood thrilling at the sight. Aloud, he
quoted:-

"'Under the bludgeoning of Chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.'"

"You like Henley," Brissenden said, his expression changing swiftly to
large graciousness and tenderness. "Of course, I couldn't have expected
anything else of you. Ah, Henley! A brave soul. He stands out among
contemporary rhymesters--magazine rhymesters--as a gladiator stands out
in the midst of a band of eunuchs."

"You don't like the magazines," Martin softly impeached.

"Do you?" was snarled back at him so savagely as to startle him.

"I--I write, or, rather, try to write, for the magazines," Martin
faltered.

"That's better," was the mollified rejoinder. "You try to write, but you
don't succeed. I respect and admire your failure. I know what you
write. I can see it with half an eye, and there's one ingredient in it
that shuts it out of the magazines. It's guts, and magazines have no use
for that particular commodity. What they want is wish-wash and slush,
and God knows they get it, but not from you."

"I'm not above hack-work," Martin contended.

"On the contrary--" Brissenden paused and ran an insolent eye over
Martin's objective poverty, passing