number of consecutive months in Japan, which was still unfamiliar even
to most professional travelers, and he had come back to America
enthusiastic and full of plans for many enterprises which his shrewd,
but not very persistent brain had conceived. The two old friends were
delighted to see each other, but they took this long-deferred meeting
as calmly as if they were always next-door neighbors. It was a most
interesting thing that while they led such different lives and took
such apparently antagonistic routes of progression, they were pretty
sure to arrive at the same conclusion, though it might appear
otherwise to a listener who knew them both slightly.

"And who is the little girl?" asked Dr. Ferris, who had refused his
entertainer's cigars and produced a pipe from one pocket, after having
drawn a handful of curious small jade figures from another and pushed
them along the edge of the study table, without comment, for his
friend to look at. Some of them were so finely carved that they looked
like a heap of grotesque insects struggling together as they lay
there, but though Dr. Leslie's eyes brightened as he glanced at them,
he gave no other sign of interest at that time, and answered his
guest's question instead.

"She is a ward of mine," he said; "she was left quite alone by the
death of her grandmother some months ago, and so I brought her here."

"It isn't often that I forget a face," said Dr. Ferris, "but I have
been trying to think what association I can possibly have with that
child. I remember at last; she looks like a young assistant surgeon
who was on the old frigate Fortune with me just before I left the
service. I don't think he was from this part of the country though; I
never heard what became of him."