The servant rose and essayed a raid on his hat and stick, but Mr. Webster, who was impatient at thus finding himself amidst old scenes, fended him away and said “Shoo fly!” Then he crossed the empty lounge and ascended the stairs leading to the card room, at the entrance of which he paused, leaning on his stick—in unconscious imitation of a Sicilian gentleman posing for his photograph after his first payday in America—swept that room with a wistful eye and sighed because nothing had changed in three long years.     

       Save for the slight job of kalsomining which Father Time had done on the       edges of the close-cropped Websterian moustache, the returned prodigal might have stepped out of the Club but yesterday. He would not have taken the short end of a modest bet that even a fresh log had been placed on the fire or that the domino-players over against the wall had won or lost a drink or two and then resumed playing—although perchance there were a few more gray hairs in the thickly thatched head of old Neddy Jerome, sitting in his favourite seat by the window and turning the cards in his eternal game of solitaire, in blissful ignorance that John Stuart Webster stood within the portals of home and awaited the fatted calf.     

       “I'll hypnotize the old pelican into looking up,”       Webster soliloquized, and forthwith bent a beetling gaze upon the player. For as many as five seconds he strove to demonstrate the superiority of mind over solitaire; then, despairing of success, he struck the upholstery of an adjacent chair a terrific blow with his stick—the effect of which was to cause everybody in the room to start and to conceal Mr. Webster momentarily in a cloud of dust, the while in a bellowing baritone he sang:     

  

       His father was a hard-rock miner;     

       He comes from my home town——     

  

       “Jack Webster! The devil's own kin!” shouted Neddy Jerome. He swept the cards into a heap and waddled across the room to meet this latest assailant of the peace and dignity of the Engineers'       Club. “You old, worthless, ornery, no-good son of a lizard! I've never been so glad to see a man that didn't owe me money.” He seized Webster's hand in both of his and wrung it affectionately.       “Jack,” he continued, “I've been combing the whole civilized world for you, for a month, at least. Where the devil have       

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