y only a few moments, and had not known his
name.

He came and sat himself down in an easy-chair by my side, and puffed in
silence at a big cigar.

"We have met before," I said. "I could not make you out at first. You
were at Weissenstein last year. You remember that affair?"

Professor Cutter looked at me curiously for several seconds before he
answered.

"You are the man who let down the rope," he said at last. "I remember
you now very well."

There was a short pause.

"Did you ever hear any more of that lady?" asked he, presently.

"No, I did not even know her name, any more than I knew yours," I
replied. "I took you for a physician, and the lady for your patient."

We heard steps on the polished floor outside the smoking-room.

"If I were you, I would not say anything to Carvel about that matter,"
said the professor quickly.

The door opened, and John entered the room. He was a little pale and
looked nervous.

"Ah," he ejaculated, "I thought you would fraternize over the tobacco."

"We are doing our best," said I.

"It is written that the free should be brothers and equal," said the
professor, with a laugh.

"I never knew two brothers who were equal," said Carvel, in reflective
tones. "I do not know why the ideal freedom and equality, attaching to
the ideal brothers, should not be as good as any other visionary aim for
tangible earthly government; but it certainly does not seem so easy of
realization, nor so sound in the working, as our good English principle
that exceptions prove the rule, and that the more exceptions there are
the better the rule will be."

"Is that speech an attack upon American freedom?" asked the professor,
laughing a little. "I believe Mr. Griggs is an American."

"No, indeed. Why should I attack American freedom?" said John.

"American freedom is not so easily attacked," I remarked. "It eludes
definition and rejects political paradox. No one ever connects our
republic with the fashionable liberty-fraternity-and-equality doctrines
of European emancipation; still less with the communistic idea that,
although men have very different capacities for originating things, all
men have an equal right to destroy them."

"Griggs is mounted upon his hobby," remarked John Carvel, stretching his
feet out towards the fire. The professor turned the light of his
spectacles upon me, and puffed a cloud of smoke.

"Are you a political enthusiast and a rider of hobby-horses, Mr.
Griggs?"