is it since you----?"

"Four years. She's very glad to have me, of course."

"And how's your brother Claud?"

"Oh! All right, thanks; a bit worried with the estate. The poor old
gov'nor left it in rather a mess, you know."

"Ah! Yes. Does he do other work?"

"Oh! Always busy in the parish."

"And your brother Richard?"

"He's all right. Came home this year. Got just enough to live on, with
his pension--hasn't saved a rap, of course."

"And Willie? Is he still delicate?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"Easy job, his, you know. And even if his health does give out, his
college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. So jolly
popular, old Willie!"

"And Alan? I haven't heard anything of him since his Peruvian thing came
to grief. He married, didn't he?"

"Rather! One of the Burleys. Nice girl--heiress; lot of property in
Hampshire. He looks after it for her now."

"Doesn't do anything else, I suppose?"

"Keeps up his antiquarianism."

I had exhausted the members of his family.

Then, as though by eliciting the good fortunes of his brothers I had cast
some slur upon himself, he said suddenly: "If the railway had come, as it
ought to have, while I was out there, I should have done quite well with
my fruit farm."

"Of course," I agreed; "it was bad luck. But after all, you're sure to
get a job soon, and--so long as you can live up there with your aunt--you
can afford to wait, and not bother."

"Yes," he murmured. And I got up.

"Well, it's been very jolly to hear about you all!"

He followed me out.

"Awfully glad, old man," he said, "to have seen you, and had this talk.
I was feeling rather low. Waiting to know whether I get that job--it's
not lively."

He came down the Club steps with me. By the door of my cab a loafer was
standing; a tall tatterdemalion with a pale, bearded face. My distant
relative fended him away, and leaning through the window, murmured:
"Awful lot of these chaps about now!"

For the life of me I could not help looking at him very straight. But no
flicker of apprehension crossed his face.

"Well, good-by again!" he said: "You've cheered me up a lot!"

I glanced back from my moving cab. Some monetary transaction was passing
between him and the loafer, but, short-sighted as I am, I found it
difficult to decide which of those tall, pale, bearded figures was giving
the other one a penny. And by some strange freak an awful vision shot up
before me--o