all, and the while we were dressing a message came for
"Goggles" that Mr. Hodgson wished to see him in his private room.

"He can make a funny face, no doubt about it," commented one gentleman,
as "Goggles" left the room.

"I defy him to make a funnier one than God Almighty's made for him,"
responded the massive gentleman.

"There's a deal in luck," observed, with a sigh, another, a tall,
handsome young gentleman possessed of a rich bass voice.

Leaving the stage door, I encountered a group of gentlemen waiting upon
the pavement outside. Not interested in them myself, I was hurrying
past, when one laid a hand upon my shoulder. I turned. He was a big,
broad-shouldered fellow, with a dark Vandyke beard and soft, dreamy
eyes.

"Dan!" I cried.

"I thought it was you, young 'un, in the first act," he answered. "In
the second, when you came on without a moustache, I knew it. Are you in
a hurry?"

"Not at all," I answered. "Are you?"

"No," he replied; "we don't go to press till Thursday, so I can write my
notice to-morrow. Come and have supper with me at the Albion and we will
talk. You look tired, young 'un."

"No," I assured him, "only excited--partly at meeting you."

He laughed, and drew my arm through his.

CHAPTER V.

HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL.

Over our supper Dan and I exchanged histories. They revealed points of
similarity. Leaving school some considerable time earlier than myself,
Dan had gone to Cambridge; but two years later, in consequence of the
death of his father, of a wound contracted in the Indian Mutiny and
never cured, had been compelled to bring his college career to an
untimely termination.

"You might not have expected that to grieve me," said Dan, with a smile,
"but, as a matter of fact, it was a severe blow to me. At Cambridge I
discovered that I was by temperament a scholar. The reason why at school
I took no interest in learning was because learning was, of set purpose,
made as uninteresting as possible. Like a Cook's tourist party through a
picture gallery, we were rushed through education; the object being not
that we should see and understand, but that we should be able to say
that we had done it. At college I chose my own subjects, studied them
in my own way. I fed on knowledge, was not stuffed with it like a
Strassburg goose."

Returning to London, he had taken a situation in a bank, the chairman of
which had been an old friend of his father. Th