. Five thousand a year isn't to be sneezed
at."

"I assure you that I've never felt less like sneezing in my life,
but--"

"Think, man," he urged, "all expenses paid, a fine house, horses,
motors, the life of a country gentleman. In short, your own rooms,
time to read yourself stodgy if you like, and a fine young cub to
build in your own image."

"Mine?" I gasped.

He laughed.

"Good Lord, Pope! You always did hate 'em, you know."

"Hate? Who?"

"Women."

I felt myself frowning.

"Women! No, I do not love women and I have some reasons for believing
that women do not love me. I have never had any money and my
particular kind of pulchritude doesn't appeal to them. Hence their
indifference. Hence mine. Like begets like, Jack."

He laughed.

"I have reasons for believing the antipathy is deeper than that."

I shrugged the matter off. It is one which I find little pleasure in
discussing.

"You may draw whatever inference you please," I finished dryly.

He lighted a cigarette and inhaled it jubilantly.

"Don't you see," he said, "that it all goes to show that you're
precisely the man the governor's looking for? What do you say?"

I hesitated, though every dictate of inclination urged. Here was an
opportunity to put to the test a most important theory of the old
Socratic doctrine, that true knowledge is to be elicited from within
and is to be sought for in ideas and not in particulars of sense. What
a chance! A growing youth in seclusion. Such a magnificent seclusion!
Where I could try him in my own alembic! Still I hesitated. The
imminence of such good fortune made me doubt my own efficiency.

"Suppose I was the wrong man," I quibbled for want of something better
to say.

"The executors will have to take their chance on that," he said,
rising with the air of a man who has rounded out a discussion. "Come!
Let's settle the thing."

Ballard had always had a way with him, a way as foreign to my own as
the day from night. From my own point of view I had always held Jack
lightly, and yet I had never disliked him--nor did I now--for there
was little doubt of his friendliness and sincerity. So I rose and
followed him, my docility the philosophy of a full stomach plus the
chance of testing the theory of probabilities; for to a man who for
six years had reckoned life by four walls of a room and a shelf of
books this was indeed an adventure. I was already meshed in the loom
of destiny. He led me to a large au