had indeed a young brother Richard, and that my young brother Richard certainly had a limp. We were saved the trouble of further description by the interruption of a high-pitched voice:

"'Not a shade shy of six foot tall; shoulders like Georgees Carpenteer's when he's pleased with life in the movies; hair black as a Crow Injun's; eyes blue as a hummin' bird's weskit; and a grip—wa-al, he don't wear no velvet gloves: Limpin' Dick Bellamy!'

"'That's him,' said the queer man. I agreed that the portrait was unmistakable, and asked if either of them could tell me where he was now, as I hadn't seen him for a long time. So the queer man told me that two years before Dick, who was then overseer of a large rubber plantation north of Banjermassin in Borneo, had given him a job. He added, however, that my brother had left Borneo some six months later. The American had first met him four years before in Bombay, and they had joined forces in a pearl-fishing expedition which took them somewhere in the Persian Gulf—the Bahr-el—Bahr-el-Benat Islands, I think; they had separated four months later and had not met again for more than three years, when the American had run across him as part owner of a cattle ranch in Southern Paraguay."

Amaryllis was interested in spite of herself; but her father had heard these things before, and was thinking of others.

"Jack-of-all-trades," he said, turning towards the house.

"And master of most," called Bellamy after him.

"What a good brother you are!" said Amaryllis softly.

"He's all the family I've got, Amaryllis," he said. "Besides, I'm almost old enough to be his father, and I often feel as if I were."

"From what you've told me, he must be thirty at least," objected the girl, "and I'm sure you're not fifty."

"Over," said Bellamy.

"You don't look it," she answered.

"Thank you."

"What for?"

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