philanthropic and rich--what better would you
ask?"

"I wish everyone wouldn't bother a man to marry," Maitland replied
testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was
pale and unwholesome.

"What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what's the matter with you? Here
you are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements
say, no relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what
you make by writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with
you?"

"Well, you should know best What's the good of your being a doctor, and
acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what
there is of it), if you can't tell what's the nature of my complaint?"

"I don't diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side
of the water, among the hardy patients of Mundy & Barton, general
practitioners. There is plenty of human nature _there!_"

"And do you mean to stay there with Mundy much longer?"

"Well, I don't know. A fellow is really doing some good, and it is a
splendid practice for mastering surgery. They are always falling off
roofs, or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed between barges,
or kicking each other into most interesting jellies. Then the foreign
sailors are handy with their knives. Altogether, a man learns a good
deal about surgery in Chelsea. But, I say," Barton went on, lowering his
voice, "where on earth did you pick up----?"

Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, standing at some distance,
the centre of half a dozen very youthful revellers.

"Cranley, do you mean? I met him at the _Trumpet_ office. He was writing
about the Coolie Labor Question and the Eastern Question. He has been in
the South Seas, like you."

"Yes; he has been in a lot of queerer places than the South Seas,"
answered the other, "and he ought to know something about Coolies. He has
dealt in them, I fancy."

"I daresay," Maitland replied rather wearily. "He seems to have
travelled a good deal: perhaps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever
they may be."

"Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind of man your guest is, or
don't you?"

"He seems to be a military and sporting kind of gent, so to speak," said
Maitland; "but what does it matter?"

"Then you don't know why he left his private tutor's; you don't know why
he left the University; you don't know why he left the Ninety-second;
you don't know, and no one does, what he did after that; an