The two young men had been separated for a number of years. They had met
again and passed a number of happy weeks together, enriched by a liberal
exchange of ideas. Those weeks were the beginning of similar epochs in
the career of each. It was at little winter festivities in Frederick von
Kammacher's comfortable home that the cigarettes of Simon Arzt of Port
Said, which Rasmussen had brought from the place of their manufacture,
had played their rôle.

Now, in the reading-room of Hofmann's Hotel, near the harbour, he wrote
him a letter.

* * * * *

Dear old George,

My fingers are clammy. I am constantly dipping a broken pen in mouldy
ink; but if I don't write to you now, you won't get any news of me for
three weeks. This evening I board the _Roland_ of the North German
Steamship Company.

There seems to be something in your dreams. Nobody could have told you
of my trip. Two hours before I started, I myself knew nothing of it.

Day after to-morrow it will be a year since you came to us direct from
Bremen, after your second journey, with a trunk full of stories,
photographs, and the cigarettes of Simon Arzt. I had scarcely set foot in
England when twenty paces from the landing-place, I beheld our beloved
brand in a shop window. Of course, I bought some, by wholesale, in fact,
and am smoking one while writing, for the sake of auld lang syne.