him and tossed
it into the fireplace with a careless nod, that it flashed into the mind
of Max that the incident had some significance.

What on earth had Dudley been doing at Limehouse? His parents had had
property there, certainly, many years ago. But not a square foot of the
grimy, slimy, auriferous Thames-side land, not a brick or a beam of the
warehouses and sheds which had been theirs in the old days, had
descended to Dudley. Owing to the fraudulent action of Edward Jacobs,
all had had to go.

CHAPTER IV.

A PARAGRAPH IN "THE STANDARD."

Max did not stay long with his friend, but made the excuse that he was
half asleep, after a few minutes' rather desultory conversation, to go
back to his hotel.

It was with the greatest reluctance that he left his friend alone; but
Dudley had given him intimations, in every look and tone and movement,
that he wished to be by himself; and this fact increased the heaviness
of heart with which Max, full of forebodings on his friend's account,
had gone reluctantly down the creaking stairs.

Again and again Max asked himself, during his short walk from Lincoln's
Inn to Arundel Street, why he had not had the courage to put a question
or two straightforwardly to Dudley. As a matter of fact, however, the
reason was simple enough. The relative positions of the two men had been
suddenly reversed, and neither of them, as yet, felt easy under the new
conditions.

Dudley, the hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious,
thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and
affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some
unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level.
It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who
had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was
he who had watched the other, been solicitous for him, trembled for him.

Max could not understand. He lay awake worrying himself about his
friend, feeling Dudley's fall more acutely than he would have felt his
own, and did not fall asleep until it was nearly daylight.

In these circumstances he overslept himself, and it was eleven o'clock
before he found himself in the hotel coffee-room, waiting for his
breakfast.

He was in the act of pouring out his coffee, when his name, uttered
behind him in a familiar voice, made him start. The next moment Dudley
Horne stood by his side, and holding out