ion that drew a covert smile
from his friend's lips--the matter was soon settled.

An animated conversation ensued, consisting mainly of a disjointed
monologue on Cedric's part; for Malcolm Herrick only contributed a
laconic remark or question at intervals, but there was a kindly gleam
in his eyes as he listened, as though the fair, closely-cropped head
lying back on the shabby cushion, with the eager bright young face, was
a goodly spectacle.

At first sight the friendship between these two men seemed singularly
ill-assorted; for what possible affinity could there be between a
thoughtful, intellectual man like Malcolm Herrick, with his habitual
reserve, his nature refined, critical, and yet imaginative, with its
strong bias to pessimism, and its intolerance of all shams, and Cedric,
with his facile, pleasure-loving temperament, at once indolent and
mercurial--a creature of moods and tenses, as fiery as a Welshman, but
full of lovable and generous impulses?

The disparity between their ages also seemed to forbid anything like
equality of sympathy. Malcolm was at least eight or nine years older,
and at times he seemed middle-aged in Cedric's eyes. "He is such a
regular old fossil," he would say--"such a cut and dried specimen of
humanity, that it is impossible to keep in touch with him; it stands to
reason that we must clash a bit; but there, in spite of his cranks,
Herrick is a good fellow." But, notwithstanding this faint praise, the
inhabitants of the Wood House knew well that there was no one whom
Cedric valued more than his friend Malcolm Herrick.

CHAPTER II

FALLEN AMONG THIEVES

Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his
house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by
him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this
touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit.--EMERSON.

Malcolm Herrick was a devout disciple of Emerson. He always spoke of
him as one of the master minds that dominated humanity. "He is the
chosen Gamaliel at whose feet I could sit for ever," he would say; "on
every subject he speaks well and wisely;" and once, when he was
strolling through Kensington Gardens with his sister-friend, Anna
Sheldon, he had electrified her by quoting a favourite passage from his
essay on friendship.

"Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness
that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in