ls and erasers, all the
neat paraphernalia of his trade. Everything was in order; yet he touched
none of them. Presently his eyes fell upon his open watch, and his mind
went off into new channels, or rather into old channels which he thought
he had abandoned for this half-hour at any rate. In five minutes more,
he put away his manuscript, picked up his watch, and strolled back into
the sitting-room.

Nicolovius was sitting where he had left him, except that now he was not
reading but merely staring out of the window. He glanced around with a
look of pleased surprise and welcome.

"Ah-h! Did genius fail to burn?" he asked, employing a bromidic phrase
which Queed particularly detested.

"That is one way of putting it, I suppose."

"Or did you take pity on my solitariness? You must not let me become a
drag upon you."

Queed, dropping into a chair, rather out of humor, made no reply.
Nicolovius continued to look out of the window.

"I see in the _Post_," he presently began again, "that Colonel Cowles,
after getting quite well, broke himself down again in preparing for the
so-called Reunion. It seems rather hard to have to give one's life for
such a rabble of beggars."

"That is how you regard the veterans, is it?"

"Have you ever seen the outfit?"

"Never."

"I have lived here long enough to learn something of them. Look at them
for yourself next week. Mix with them. Talk with them. You will find
them worth a study--and worth nothing else under the sun."

"I have been looking forward to doing something of that sort," said
Queed, introspectively.

Had not Miss Weyland, the last time he had seen her--namely, one evening
about two months before,--expressly invited him to come and witness the
Reunion parade from her piazza?

"You will see," said Nicolovius, in his purring voice, "a lot of shabby
old men, outside and in, who never did an honest day's work in their
lives."

He paused, finished his cigarette and suavely resumed:

"They went to war as young men, because it promised to be more exciting
than pushing a plow over a worn-out hillside. Or because there was
nothing else to do. Or because they were conscripted and kicked into it.
They came out of the war the most invincible grafters in history. The
shiftless boor of a stable-boy found himself transformed into a shining
hero, and he meant to lie back and live on it for the rest of his days.
Be assured that he understood very well the cash value of his ol