occasion was the lunch of Mr. Nicholas Grips. Nickie had been given the
meal half-an-hour earlier by a kind soul in one of the suburbs, to whom
he had pitifully presented his urgent need of sustenance of an inviting
kind. Very adroitly Nickie the Kid had dwelt upon his necessities, while
impressing the lady's with the eccentricities of a peculiarly capricious
appetite.

It was the day after the distressing incident in Biggs's Buildings. Mr.
Crips was no longer dressed in his clerical garments; they were carefully
stowed away in a niche in a riverside quarry where he had long kept his
wardrobe. To-day Nickie was dressed in the rags of a simple mendicant.

The strongly melodramatic adventure the previous day did not seem to
distress Mr. Crips; he ate heartily, but had only reached his second
course, which was represented by the chicken, when his attention was
attracted by a very lean, very pale, hollow-eyed, sad stranger who had
seated himself on a sloping tree nearer the river, and was eyeing the
banquet hungrily.

Nickie the Kid, was not selfish. When his own needs were fairly met he
could be generous with anybody's property, even his own. He tapped the
chicken's breastbone invitingly with his penknife, and addressed the
stranger.

"May I offer you a little lunch, sir?" he said urbanely, with quite the
air of a generous host.

The long, lean man shook his head in mute melancholy, but accepted the
invitation as an offer of friendship, and approached nearer, seating
himself on a rock facing Nickie's banquet.