k Foe first made acquaintance? Of course you do.
Well, there was a little man seated in the hall, fronting you, and he
read the explanation and gave it to me later, as he helped me on with
my coat. I made no account of it at the time: but he said that he'd
seen another man looking out of your eyes, for a moment, and it gave
him a scunner."

Again Farrell pondered. "I dare say he was right, too," he said
thoughtfully. "When two men are made for one another, I guess their
souls--if that's not too good a word--must exchange flesh and
clothing now and then, so that for the moment there's a puzzle to
separate t'other from which. . . . Has Foe told you about _her_--
about Santa?"

"He has," said I.

"Yet he can't have told you all: for he doesn't know it all--about
Renton, for instance, and how I did that bolt from him to Costa Rica,
and from Costa Rica to San Ramon. You must hear all about that, if
you will: because, when you've inspected the island for yourself,
your next business will be with Renton, and I want you to understand
the man you will be dealing with."

Thereupon he told me: and that is how I was able, the other night, to
relate what happened in Costa Rica and at San Ramon.

One of these days, when you're fairly rested, you shall have a full,
dull, true, and particular account of the voyage upon which I
started, next day, with Jephson, as per schedule: with a detailed
description of Santa Island, or Santa Santissima (to give it its full
name). But this story isn't about me: it concerns Foe and Farrell:
and therefore it's enough to say here, that I reached Valparaiso and
found Captain Jeff Hales waiting for me with his schooner fresh from
dock, and fleet: that he and I took to one another in the inside of
ten minutes; that our voyage, first and last, went like a yachting
cruise; that we made the island and spent something more than two
months on it, prospecting, mapping, choosing the sites for our
factories that were to be, even planning a light tramway to cart
their produce down to the grand north-eastern bay which (as Foe had
warned me) proved to be the only anchorage. But Santa's cross was
there, standing yet on the small beach where the castaways had
landed, and no doubt it stands yet. No storm ever seriously troubles
the water within that lovely protected hollow.

Returning to Valparaiso, I travelled north by steamer, by rail, by
steamer and rail again, to New York, hunted up Renton, and foun