ugh--but at least we have the peg at our
disposal."

"Thank you--no more." Colonel Wallifarro spoke with a pleasingly
modulated voice, trained into effectiveness by years of jury elocution.
"I've had my evening's allowance, except for a night-cap."

Masters rose abruptly from his chair. He tossed down half the contents
of his glass and paced the floor with a restless stride, gnawing at his
close-cropped and sandy moustache. His tall, well-knit figure moved with
a certain athletic vitality, and his florid face was tanned like a
pig-skin saddle-skirt. But his brow was corrugated in a frown of
discontent, and his pale blue eyes were almost truculent.

"By Gad, Tom," he flared out with choleric impetuosity, "you can put
more righteous rebuke into a polite refusal of liquor than most men
could crowd into a whole damned temperance lecture. I dare say, however,
you're quite right. Life spells something for you. It's worth
conserving. You've got assured position, an adoring family, money,
success, hosts of friends. You'd be a blithering fool, I grant you, to
waste yourself in indulgence, but I'm not so ideally situated. I 'take
the cash and let the credit go.'"

"Yet you have, ahead of you, some ten or twelve years more of life than
I can reasonably expect," was the quiet response. "You still have
youth--or youth's fulfilment--early middle-age."

"And a jolly lot that means to me," retorted Masters, with acerbity. "I
live here among illiterates, working for a corporation on a salary pared
to the bone. At the time of life when one ought to be at the top of
one's abilities, I'm the most pathetic human thing under God's arching
sky--a man who started out with big promise--and fell by the wayside.
Heaven help the man who fires and falls back--and if he can retrieve a
bit of temporary solace from that poor substitute"--he jerked a
forefinger toward the bottle--"then I say for Heaven's sake let him
poison himself comfortably and welcome."

Colonel Wallifarro studied the darkened scowl of his companion for a
moment before he replied, and when he spoke his own manner retained its
imperturbability.

"I didn't offer gratuitous criticism, Larry," he suggested. "I merely
declined another toddy."

"You know my case, Tom"--the younger of the two caught him up quickly;
"you know that no younger son ever came out from England with fairer
expectations of succeeding on his own. I've been neither the fool nor
the shirk--and yet--" A shr