his thinking.

He looked more than ever a giant in the midst of the little tropical
people, and seemed to feel his size in the general diminutive setting.
Yet there was balance and fitness about his splendid physical
organization, which suggested that he could be quick as a mink in
action. He chaffed the native who waited upon him, and his face
softened into charming boyishness as he laughed. His mouth was fresh as
a child's, but on a scale of grandeur. Bedient found himself smiling
with him. Then there was that irresistible folding about the eyes when
he laughed, which is Irish as sin, and quite as attractive. Left to
himself he fell to brooding, and his brow puzzled over some matter in
the frank bored way of one pinned to a textbook. Bedient sat down at
the other's table. Acquaintance was as agreeably received as offered.

The stranger's name was Jim Framtree. He had been on the Island for
several weeks, and intended to stay for awhile. He liked Equatoria well
enough--as well, in fact, as a man could like any place, when he was
barred from the real trophy-room in the house of the world, New York.

"I'm sailing for New York in the morning," Bedient said.

Framtree shivered and fell silent.

"You've found work that you like here?" Bedient asked simply.

The other glanced at him humorously, and yet with a bit of intensity,
too,--as if searching for the meaning under such an unadorned question.

"I seem to have caught on with Señor Rey at _The Pleiad_," he replied.