easure to have had some part in his chastisement, and as we plodded
westward through the empty streets I pictured him driving home in a
hansom, trying to gather his scattered wits and to discover some reason
why a quiet, respectful waiter should have assailed him without cause.
Poor muddled Talcott! He did not know that his betrayer had been
distilled in far-off Scotland, and had lain away in vats a score of
years awaiting that very moment to make him speak his honest thought
just as the quiet, respectful waiter was bending behind him to pick up
crumbs. Perhaps he could not even remember what he was saying when he
was stopped by the long fingers which were thrust down the back of his
neck. Did he remember, what he was saying could be none of the
waiter's affair, anyway. It could matter nothing to that humble
creature if he did speak of Rufus Blight as a vulgar little brute and
of Penelope as "a bit raw, but worth marrying for her money alone." "A
woman's millions never grow _passe_," was an aphorism which fitted the
lips of the half-drunken cynic. To be sure, the things which he had
said were not such as a man would give expression to were he cold
sober, even if he thought them, and much less would he apply them to
particular persons, yet when you are sitting late at night with such a
good fellow as Bob Grant over your fifth Scotch and soda, you are
likely to be a little unguarded. For who would think of a waiter
objecting? Poor, muddled, drunken Talcott! He did not know that he
really had given the first blow, had changed the obsequious waiter into
a fury by striking him in the heart of his pride. And to such a fury
had the Professor been wrought, and so firmly did anger hold his mind,
that my own sudden interference was received by him as quite in the
ordinary, though he protested against my good offices. He remonstrated
indignantly when I acquiesced in O'Corrigan's assertion that my humble
friend must be demented, a plea which opened a way out of the
predicament. Fortunately, the Professor's own wisdom in refusing an
explanation of an apparently unprovoked assault gave color to this
theory, and as Talcott's one clear thought was to escape without any
unpleasant notoriety, O'Corrigan satisfied his ire by ordering his mad
employee out of the place.

So the Professor came into my charge. Had we met after a separation of
only a day, his treatment of me could not have been more casual. He
consented to my acc