n accounts of whose exploits had
fired my schoolboy imagination and made stay-at-home life forever after
an impossibility.

"I missed the steamer, Fred. Not another for a week. Going down now
to see about a passage to Somaliland. I suppose you'll be at the club
after dinner?"

"No" said Fred. "We've an invitation, but I think we'll send a note
and say we can't come. We'll dine at our hotel and sit on the veranda
afterward."

I wondered what Fred was driving at, and so did the collector who was
headed across the street and listening with all ears.

"That so? Not a bad idea. They've very kindly made me an honorary
member of the club, but I rather expect there's a string to that--eh,
Fred, don't you? They'll expect stories,--stories. I get tired of
telling the same tales so many times over. Suppose I join you fellows,
eh? I'm at the Royal. You at the other place? Suppose I join you
after dinner, and we have a pipe together on the veranda?"

"Nothing I'd like better," said Fred, and I felt too pleased with the
prospect to say anything at all. Growing old is a foolish and
unnecessary business, but there is no need to forego while young the
thrills of unashamed hero-worship; in fact, that is one of the ways of
continuing young. It is only the disillusioned (poor deceived ones)
and the cynics, who grow old ungracefully.

We went upstreet, through the shadow of the great grim fort. The
trolley-car trundled down among the din, smells and colors of the
business-end of town. Looking over my shoulder I saw Courtney talking
to the collector.

"We're getting absolution, Fred!" said I.

"I'm not sure we need it," Fred answered. "I hope Courtney won't tell
too much!" So quickly does a man jump from praying for friends at
court to fearing them!

"Courtney looked to me," said Will, "like a man who would give no games
away."

"Glad you think that of him," said Fred.

"Why?"

"Tell you later, maybe."

But he did not tell until after dinner. (It was a good dinner for East
Africa. Shark steak figured in it, under a more respectable name; and
there was zebu hump, guinea-fowl, and more different kinds of fruit
than a man could well remember.) When it was over we sat in deep
armchairs on the long wide veranda that fronts the whole hotel. The
evening sea-breeze came and wafted in on us the very scents of Araby;
the night sounds that whisper of wilderness gave the lie to a tinkling
guitar that somewhere i