he was thinking.

"Do you know Mr. Curtis?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir." This came very shortly.

"Should you call him--er, a hard man?" asked Nicholas smoothly.

Again amazement fell on Jessop's soul, revealing itself momentarily in
his features. And again the amazement was concealed.

"He's a good business man, sir," came the cautious reply.

"You mean--?" suggested Nicholas.

"A good business man isn't ordinarily what you'd call tender-like," said
Jessop grimly.

Nicholas flashed a glance of amusement at him.

"I suppose not," he replied dryly.

There was a pause.

"Do the tenants ever ask to see me?" demanded Nicholas.

"They used to, sir. Now they save their shoe-leather coming up the
drive."

"Ah, you told them--?"

"Your orders, sir. You saw no one."

"I see." Nicholas's fingers were beating a light tattoo on the arm of his
chair. "Well, those are my orders. That will do. You needn't come again
till I ring."

Jessop turned towards the door.

"Oh, by the way," Nicholas's voice arrested him on the threshold, "I
fancy the middle window is unlatched."

Jessop returned and went behind the curtains.

"It was, wasn't it?" asked Nicholas as he emerged.

"Yes, sir."

Jessop left the room.

"Now how on earth did he know that?" he queried as he walked across the
hall.

The curtains had been drawn when Nicholas had been carried into the room.
The knowledge, for a man unable to move from his chair, seemed little
short of uncanny.

"_A man can face odds if he is a man, and remake his life._"

The words repeated themselves in Nicholas's brain. Each syllable was like
the incisive tap of a hammer. They fell on a wound lately dealt.

A little scene, barely ten days old, reconstructed itself in his memory.
The stage was the one he now occupied; the position the same. But another
actor was present, a big rugged man, clad in a shabby overcoat,--a man
with keen eyes, a grim mouth, and flexible sensitive hands.

"I regret to tell you that, humanly speaking, you have no more than a
year to live."

The man had looked past him as he spoke the words. He had had his back to
the light, but Nicholas had seen something almost inscrutable in his
expression.

Nicholas's voice had followed close upon the words, politely ironical.

"Personally I should have considered it a matter for congratulation
rather than regret," he had suggested.

There had been the fraction of a pause. Then the man's voice had broken