about--three years, Howard was dressing hurriedly, the door of his
sitting-room accidentally ajar. Through the crack he saw some one stooping
over the serving tray which he had himself put outside his door when he had
finished breakfast. He looked more closely. It was "the clergyman" from up
under the eaves--an unfrocked priest, thin to emaciation, misery written
upon his face even more deeply than weakness. He hastily bundled the bones
of two chops and a bit of bread into a stained and torn handkerchief, and
sprang away up the stairs toward his little hole at the roof.

Howard was in a hurry and so put off for the time action upon the natural
impulse. When he came back at midnight, there was soon a knock at his door.
He opened it and invited in the man at the threshold--a tall, strongly
built, erect German, with a dissipated handsome face, heavily scarred from
university duels.

"Pardon me for disturbing you," said the German. His speech, his tone, his
manner, left no doubt as to his breeding though they raised the gravest
doubts as to his being willing to give a true account of why he had become
a tenant in that lodging house.

"Will you have a cigarette and some whiskey?" inquired Howard.

The German's glance lit and lingered upon the bottle of Scotch on the
table. "Concentrated, double-distilled friendship," said he as he poured
out his drink.

"But a friend that drives all others away," smiled Howard.

"I have found it of a very jealous disposition," replied the German with a
careless shrug of the shoulders and a lifting of the eyebrows. "But at