and threes out of
the darkness, smiled and ogled the two whites, perhaps wooed them with a
strain of laughter, and went by again, bequeathing to the air a heady
perfume of palm-oil and frangipani blossom. From the club to Mr.
Havens's residence was but a step or two, and to any dweller in Europe
they must have seemed steps in fairyland. If such an one could but have
followed our two friends into the wide-verandahed house, sat down with
them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the
lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic food--the raw fish, the
bread-fruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the
inimitable miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and
heard by fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now
railing within against invisible assistants, a certain comely young
native lady in a sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member of the
family, and too imperious to be less; and then if such an one were
whisked again through space to Upper Tooting, or wherever else he
honoured the domestic gods, "I have had a dream," I think he would say,
as he sat up, rubbing his eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, "I
have had a dream of a place, and I declare I believe it must be heaven."
But to Dodd and his entertainer, all this amenity of the tropic night,
and all these dainties of the island table, were grown things of custom;
and they fell to meat like men who were hungry, and drifted into idle
talk like men who were a trifle bored.

The scene in the club was referred to.

"I never heard you talk so much nonsense, Loudon," said the host.

"Well, it seemed to me there was sulphur in the air, so I talked for
talking," returned the other. "But it was none of it nonsense."

"Do you mean to say it was true?" cried Havens--"that about the opium
and the wreck, and the black-mailing, and the man who became your
friend?"

"Every last word of it," said Loudon.

"You seem to have been seeing life," returned the other.

"Yes, it's a queer yarn," said his friend; "if you think you would like,
I'll tell it you."

Here follows the yarn of Loudon Dodd, not as he told it to his friend,
but as he subsequently wrote it.

THE YARN

CHAPTER I

A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION

The beginning of this yarn is my poor father's character. There never
was a better man, nor a handsomer, nor (in my view) a more
unhappy--unhappy in his business, in his pleasures, in