manly
frame had shrunken. On the other hand, Alaric's features had expanded.
His skull had filled out: even his frontal arch was rounded.

"What have you been doing in Paris, Randolph?" asked Harland with a
good-natured laugh and a faint attempt at condescension.

Dr. Randolph looked across the table; his eyes twinkled over his
classmate's tone, but he courteously answered:

"I've been experimenting there for five years. I went the usual round of
hospitals and studied with Pasteur, and have raised scores of colonies
of bacilli. Lately I have busied myself with investigations of too
complex a nature to discuss. And you----"

"Oh,--I'm a--a member of the clubs, you know. I'm now engaged in
breeding beagles. That takes lots of time you know. My father died some
years ago, and I--eh--take care of the estate."

"So?" exclaimed Randolph with a German lengthening of the vowel sound.
Then taking the opportunity while Harland was emptying his glass, he
regarded him thoughtfully.

"Look here, Slack," said the young doctor after a moment's hesitation.
"What do you say to spending the evening with me? I am lonely and want
to talk over old days. You're done up and not fit to go to the club
to-night."

Now Harland, though considerably astonished by the invitation, was also
flattered.

"But my appointment! I never missed an appointment in my life, you
know," wavered Harland unsteadily, while shifting his eyes to the door.

"Never mind that now. I'll leave word at the desk. Psst--garcon!"

The Doctor spoke masterfully; the gentleman obeyed him as readily as the
servant. A pencil note, with strict injunctions for delivery solved the
inebriate's sodden difficulty. Slack insisted upon adding that he would
still meet his friend between ten and eleven o'clock. Randolph smiled
indulgently, and they passed out into the cool air arm in arm. Randolph
hailed a coupe and got his friend into it with pardonable alacrity.

Harland was unusually communicative that evening with the man from whom
he would have hardly deigned to accept a cigarette in his college days.
He could not understand the reason for what he considered this sudden
social degradation. He accepted it in a dazed way, for he had been
drinking steadily all day.

The cab stopped before one of the few stone houses less common in Boston
than in New York, whose construction is at once singularly deceptive and
honest. It had a frontage of seventeen feet.

"A good sized dog-