"I never was popular in my life," he said. "I don't want to buy my
popularity now. To be perfectly candid with you, Raffles--"

"Don't! I can't stop to hear. They're ringing the bell. But you
shouldn't have been angry with me for saying you were a generous good
chap, Nasmyth, when you were one all the time. Good-by, old fellow!"

But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His hesitation was at an end.
There was a sudden new light in his face.

"Was I?" he cried. "Then I'll make it two hundred, and damn the odds!"

Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our seats. He saw nobody,
would acknowledge no remark. Neither did he attend to the cricket for
the first half-hour after lunch; instead, he eventually invited me to
come for a stroll on the practice ground, where, however, we found two
chairs aloof from the fascinating throng.

"I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know," he began. "But I have been
sorry since the interval. I've been sorry for poor old Nipper Nasmyth.
Did you see the idea of being popular dawn upon him for the first time
in his life?"

"I did; but you had nothing to do with that, my dear man."

Raffles shook his head over me as our eyes met. "I had everything to
do with it. I tried to make him tell the meanest lie. I made sure he
would, and for that matter he nearly did. Then, at the last moment, he
saw how to hedge things with his conscience. And his second hundred
will be a real gift."

"You mean under his own name--"

"And with his own free-will. My good Bunny, is it possible you don't
know what I did with the hundred we drew from that bank!"

"I knew what you were going to do with it," said I. "I didn't know you
had actually got further than the twenty-five you told me you were
sending as your own contribution."

Raffles rose abruptly from his chair.

"And you actually thought that came out of his money?"

"Naturally."

"In my name?"

"I thought so."

Raffles stared at me inscrutably for some moments, and for some more at
the great white numbers over the grand-stand.

"We may as well have another look at the cricket," said he. "It's
difficult to see the board from here, but I believe there's another man
out."

A Bad Night

There was to be a certain little wedding in which Raffles and I took a
surreptitious interest. The bride-elect was living in some retirement,
with a recently widowed mother and an asthmatical brother, in a mellow
hermitage on the b