oundly tender desire for her happiness was in complete possession.
Already the notion of doing anything to wound or grieve her appeared
incredible to him.

"Well, Gafferson," he heard himself saying, in one of the more reserved
tones of his patriarchal manner. He had halted close to the inattentive
man, and stood looking down upon him. His glance was at once tolerant
and watchful.

Gafferson slowly rose from his slouching posture, surveyed the other
while his faculties in leisurely fashion worked out the problem of
recognition, aud then raised his finger to his cap-brim. "Good-evening,
sir," he said.

This gesture of deference was eloquently convincing. Thorpe, after an
instant's alert scrutiny, smiled upon him. "I was glad to hear that you
had come to us," he said with benevolent affability. "We shall expect
great things of a man of your reputation."

"It'll be a fair comfort, sir," the other replied, "to be in a place
where what one does is appreciated. What use is it to succeed in
hybridizing a Hippeastrum procera with a Pancratium Amancaes, after
over six hundred attempts in ten years, and then spend three years
a-hand-nursing the seedlings, and then your master won't take enough
interest in the thing to pay your fare up to London to the exhibition
with 'em? That's what 'ud break any man's heart."

"Quite true," Thorpe assented, with patrician kindliness. "You need fear
nothing of that sort here, Gafferson. We give you a free hand. Whatever
you want, you have only to let us know. And you can't do things too well
to please us." "Thank you, sir," said Gafferson, and really, as Thorpe
thought about it, the interview seemed at an end.

The master turned upon his heel, with a brief, oblique nod over his
shoulder, and made his way out into the open air. Here, as he walked,
he drew a succession of long consolatory breaths. It was almost as if
he had emerged from the lethal presence of the fumigator itself. He took
the largest cigar from his case, lighted it, and sighed smoke-laden new
relief as he strolled back toward the terrace.

But a few minutes before he had been struggling helplessly in the coils
of an evil nightmare. These terrors seemed infinitely far behind him
now. He gave an indifferent parting glance backward at them, as one
might over his after-breakfast cigar at the confused alarms of an early
awakening hours before. There was nothing worth remembering--only the
shapeless and foolish burden of a bad d