me back to civilisation?" I echoed, lazily. "I really don't know–unless it was because I'd got tired of the other thing. Adventure–change–that's what I am in search of, my dear Farnham."

"And you come back here from service as war correspondent in Egypt (where I last read of you in the papers as having been carried down a cataract for twenty-six miles before a launch ran out and saved you) in the hope of finding 'adventure' in this workaday close of the nineteenth century? That's too good."

I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. "Yes; why not? Why should there not be as 3 great a possibility of obtaining new sensations, or at least old ones in different form, in London as anywhere else?"

3

It did not occur to me, as I idly spoke the words, that I was uttering a prophecy.

"How is it," I went on rather curiously, "that you remembered me, 'honouring my draft on sight,' so to speak? It must be four years since that very jolly supper you gave me in Denver one night, and I fancy I have changed considerably since then."

Farnham smiled in his comical American way, which was a humorous sentence in itself.

"Well, I guess it's not so easy to forget a face like yours. You are a little browner, your eyes rather keener perhaps, your head held a bit higher, your shoulders broader and drawn back more like a soldier's than ever; but, so far as I can see, those are the only changes. You might easily have forgotten me, and I'm immensely flattered that you haven't. But the fact is, my dear boy, you are simply the most interesting man I ever came across, in my own country or any other. You've always seemed 4 like a sort of hero of a tale of adventure to me; and, you see, one don't let a chap like that drop out of one's recollection. I've always eagerly followed your doings, so far as one could follow them in the newspapers, and I read your African book with the greatest interest; but somehow I never got to hear much personal gossip about you. Say, are you married or anything?"

4

"Many things, but not married," I returned. "I haven't had time to think of women. Besides, if I had, who would take me? No money, no prospects, a man who can't be happy for a fortnight in one place! What a life I should lead a woman!"

"Ah, that's one side of the picture, of course; but here's the other, as the world 

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