man stepped into the room.

"Mr. Brentwick!" Kirkwood almost shouted, jumping forward to seize his visitor's hand.

"My dear boy!" replied the latter. "I'm delighted to see you. 'Got your note not an hour ago, and came at once—you see!"

"It was mighty good of you. Sit down, please. Here are cigars.... Why, a moment ago I was the most miserable and lonely mortal on the footstool!"

"I can fancy." The elder man looked up, smiling at Kirkwood from the depths of his arm-chair, as the latter stood above him, resting an elbow on the mantel. "The management knows me,"     he offered explanation of his unceremonious appearance; "so I took the liberty of following on the heels of the bellhop, dear boy. And how are you? Why are you in London, enjoying our abominable spring weather? And why the anxious undertone I detected in your note?"

He continued to stare curiously into Kirkwood's face. At a glance, this Mr. Brentwick was a man of tallish figure and rather slender; with a countenance thin and flushed a sensitive pink, out of which his eyes shone, keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses. His years were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and the verve of thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate, fine and fragile; and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at times trembled, almost imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an air—an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience in the world. The most carping could have found no flaw in the quiet taste of his attire. To sum up, Kirkwood's very good friend—and his only one then in London—Mr. Brentwick looked and was an English     gentleman.

"Why?" he persisted, as the younger man hesitated. "I am here to find out. To-night I leave for the Continent. In the meantime ..."

"And at midnight I sail for the States," added Kirkwood.     "That is mainly why I wished to see you—to say good-by, for the time."

"You're going home—" A shadow clouded Brentwick's clear eyes.

"To fight it out, shoulder to shoulder with my brethren in adversity."

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