emboldened to ask at last. In comment upon the other's
stare of puzzled enquiry, he went on: "You're Gafferson,
aren't you? I thought so. When I last saw you, you were
running a sort of half-way house, t'other side of Belize.
That was in '90."

Gafferson--a thick-set, squat man of middle age, with a
straggling reddish beard--turned upon him a tranquil but
uninformed eye. "I suppose you would have been stopping
at Government House," he remarked. "That was in Sir
Roger Goldsworthy's time. They used to come out often
to see my flowers. And so you remembered my name.
I suppose it was because of the Gaffersoniana hybrids.
There was a good bit in the papers about them last spring."
Thorpe nodded an assent which it seemed better not to put
into words. "Well, it beats all," he mused aloud.
"Why, man, there's gold in those mountains! You had an inside
track on prospecting, placed as you were. And there's
cocoa--and some day they'll coin money in rubber, too.
All that country's waiting for is better communications.
And you were on the spot, and knew all the lay of the
land--and yet here you are back in England, getting so much
a month for messing about in the mud."

He saw swiftly that his reflections had carried him beyond
his earlier limit, and with rapidity decided upon frankness.
"No, I wasn't in the Governor's outfit at all. I was
looking for gold then--with occasionally an eye on rubber.
I stopped at your place. Don't you remember me? My
name's Thorpe. I had a beard then. Why, man, you and one