ces if you go on like this,
Morrison."

He would put on a knowing air.

"I shall squeeze them yet some day--never you fear. And that reminds
me"--pulling out his inseparable pocketbook--"there's that So-and-So
village. They are pretty well off again; I may just as well squeeze them
to begin with."

He would make a ferocious entry in the pocketbook.

Memo: Squeeze the So-and-So village at the first time of calling.

Then he would stick the pencil back and snap the elastic on with
inflexible finality; but he never began the squeezing. Some men grumbled
at him. He was spoiling the trade. Well, perhaps to a certain extent;
not much. Most of the places he traded with were unknown not only to
geography but also to the traders' special lore which is transmitted by
word of mouth, without ostentation, and forms the stock of mysterious
local knowledge. It was hinted also that Morrison had a wife in each and
every one of them, but the majority of us repulsed these innuendoes
with indignation. He was a true humanitarian and rather ascetic than
otherwise.

When Heyst met him in Delli, Morrison was walking along the street,
his eyeglass tossed over his shoulder, his head down, with the hopeless
aspect of those hardened tramps one sees on our roads trudging from
workhouse to workhouse. Being hailed on the street he looked up with a
wild worried expression. He was really in trouble. He had come the week
before into Delli and the Portuguese authorities, on some pretence
of irregularity in his papers, had inflicted a fine upon him and had
arrested his brig.

Morrison never had any spare cash in hand. With his system of trading
it would have been strange if he had; and all these debts entered in
the pocketbook weren't good enough to raise a millrei on--let alone a
shilling. The Portuguese officials begged him not to distress himself.
They gave him a week's grace, and then proposed to sell the brig at
auction. This meant ruin for Morrison; and when Heyst hailed him across
the street in his usual courtly tone, the week was nearly out.

Heyst crossed over, and said with a slight bow, and in the manner of a
prince addressing another prince on a private occasion:

"What an unexpected pleasure. Would you have any objection to drink
something with me in that infamous wine-shop over there? The sun is
really too strong to talk in the street."

The haggard Morrison followed obediently into a sombre, cool hovel which
he would have dista