rson of Scone Dacres. Their friendship had been formed some
five or six years before in South America, where they had made a
hazardous journey in company across the continent, and had thus
acquired a familiarity with one another which years of ordinary
association would have failed to give. Scone Dacres was several years
older than Lord Hawbury.

One evening Lord Hawbury had just finished his dinner, and was
dawdling about in a listless way, when Dacres entered, quite
unceremoniously, and flung himself into a chair by one of the windows.

"Any Bass, Hawbury?" was his only greeting, as he bent his head down,
and ran his hand through his bushy hair.

"Lachryma Christi?" asked Hawbury, in an interrogative tone.

"No, thanks. That wine is a humbug. I'm beastly thirsty, and as dry as
a cinder."

Hawbury ordered the Bass, and Dacres soon was refreshing himself with
copious draughts.

The two friends presented a singular contrast. Lord Hawbury was tall
and slim, with straight flaxen hair and flaxen whiskers, whose long,
pendent points hung down to his shoulders. His thin face, somewhat
pale, had an air of high refinement; and an ineradicable habit of
lounging, together with a drawling intonation, gave him the appearance
of being the laziest mortal alive. Dacres, on the other hand, was the
very opposite of all this. He was as tall as Lord Hawbury, but was
broad-shouldered and massive. He had a big head, a big mustache, and a
thick beard. His hair was dark, and covered his head in dense, bushy
curls. His voice was loud, his manner abrupt, and he always sat bolt
upright.

"Any thing up, Sconey?" asked Lord Hawbury, after a pause, during
which he had been languidly gazing at his friend.

"Well, no, nothing, except that I've been up Vesuvius."

Lord Hawbury gave a long whistle.

"And how did you find the mountain?" he asked; "lively?"

"Rather so. In fact, infernally so," added Dacres, thoughtfully. "Look
here, Hawbury, do you detect any smell of sulphur about me?"

"Sulphur! What in the name of--sulphur! Why, now that you mention it,
I _do_ notice something of a brimstone smell. Sulphur! Why, man,
you're as strong as a lighted match. What have you been doing with
yourself? Down inside, eh?"

Dacres made no answer for some time, but sat stroking his beard with
his left hand, while his right held a cigar which he had just taken
out of a box at his elbow. His eyes were fixed upon a point in the sky
exactly half-way b