told no tales. I wonder if you're like that now?"

"I don't know," said I, slightly puzzled by his tone. "I've made
such a mess of my own affairs that I trust myself about as little
as I'm likely to be trusted by anybody else. Yet I never in my
life went back on a friend. I will say that, otherwise perhaps I
mightn't be in such a hole to-night."

"Exactly," said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though in assent
to some hidden train of thought; "exactly what I remember of you,
and I'll bet it's as true now as it was ten years ago. We don't
alter, Bunny. We only develop. I suppose neither you nor I are
really altered since you used to let down that rope and I used to
come up it hand over hand. You would stick at nothing for a
pal--what?"

"At nothing in this world," I was pleased to cry.

"Not even at a crime?" said Raffles, smiling.

I stopped to think, for his tone had changed, and I felt sure he
was chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much in earnest as ever,
and for my part I was in no mood for reservations.

"No, not even at that," I declared; "name your crime, and I'm
your man."

He looked at me one moment in wonder, and another moment in
doubt; then turned the matter off with a shake of his head, and
the little cynical laugh that was all his own.