rk, stout -- _very_ stout -- with twinkling black eyes, in one
of which an eyeglass is everlastingly fixed. I say stout, but
it is a mild term; I regret to state that of late years Good
has been running to fat in a most disgraceful way. Sir Henry
tells him that it comes from idleness and over-feeding, and
Good does not like it at all, though he cannot deny it.

We sat for a while, and then I got a match and lit the lamp that
stood ready on the table, for the half-light began to grow dreary,
as it is apt to do when one has a short week ago buried the hope
of one's life. Next, I opened a cupboard in the wainscoting
and got a bottle of whisky and some tumblers and water. I always
like to do these things for myself: it is irritating to me to
have somebody continually at my elbow, as though I were an
eighteen-month-old baby. All this while Curtis and Good had
been silent, feeling, I suppose, that they had nothing to say
that could do me any good, and content to give me the comfort
of their presence and unspoken sympathy; for it was only their
second visit since the funeral. And it is, by the way, from
the _presence_ of others that we really derive support in our dark
hours of grief, and not from their talk, which often only serves
to irritate us. Before a bad storm the game always herd together,
but they cease their calling.

They sat and smoked and drank whisky and water, and I stood by
the fire also smoking and looking at them.

At last I spoke. 'Old friends,' I said, 'how long is it since
we got back from Kukuanaland?'

'Three years,' said Good. 'Why do you ask?'

'I ask because I think that I have had a long enough spell of
civilization. I am going back to the veldt.'

Sir Henry laid his head back in his arm-chair and laughed one
of his deep laughs. 'How very odd,' he said, 'eh, Good?'

Good beamed at me mysteriously through his eyeglass and murmured,
'Yes, odd -- very odd.'

'I don't quite understand,' said I, looking from one to the other,
for I dislike mysteries.

'Don't you, old fellow?' said Sir Henry; 'then I will explain.
As Good and I were walking up here we had a talk.'

'If Good was there you probably did,' I put in sarcastically,
for Good is a great hand at talking. 'And what may it have been about?'

'What do you think?' asked Sir Henry.

I shook my head. It was not likely that I should know what Good
might be talking about. He talks about so many things.

'Well, it was about a