parently, he had done no work at all, in the bread-winner's
sense of the word. This was so like Joel that it was taken for granted
in his sister's mind. All his voyages and adventures and painful
enterprises had been informed by the desire of the buccaneer--the
passion to reap where others had sown, or, at the worst, to get
something for nothing.

The discursive story began to narrow and concentrate itself when at last
it reached Mexico. The sister changed her position in her chair, and
crossed her knees when Tehuantepec was mentioned. It was from that
place that Joel had sent her the amazing remittance over two years ago.
Curiously enough, though, it was at this point in his narrative that he
now became vague as to details. There were concessions of rubber forests
mentioned, and the barter of these for other concessions with money
to boot, and varying phases of a chronic trouble about where the true
boundary of Guatemala ran--but she failed clearly to understand much
about it all. His other schemes and mishaps she had followed readily
enough. Somehow when they came to Mexico, however, she saw everything
jumbled and distorted, as through a haze. Once or twice she interrupted
him to ask questions, but he seemed to attach such slight importance to
her comprehending these details that she forbore. Only one fact was
it necessary to grasp about the Mexican episode, apparently. When
he quitted Tehuantepec, to make his way straight to London, at the
beginning of the year, he left behind him a rubber plantation which he
desired to sell, and brought with him between six and seven thousand
pounds, with which to pay the expenses of selling it. How he had
obtained either the plantation or the money did not seem to have made
itself understood. No doubt, as his manner indicated when she ventured
her enquiries, it was quite irrelevant to the narrative.

In Mexico, his experience had been unique, apparently, in that no
villain had appeared on the scene to frustrate his plans. He at least
mentioned no one who had wronged him there. When he came to London,
however, there were villains and to spare. He moved to the mantel, when
he arrived at this stage of the story, and made clear a space for his
elbow to rest among the little trinkets and photographs with which it
was burdened. He stood still thereafter, looking down at her; his voice
took on a harsher note.

Much of this story, also, she knew by heart. This strange, bearded,
greyish-