as
a sphinx, and smoking his pipe.

"Please come and talk some more," said Aladdin.

Again Manners came.

"Tell me about it," said Aladdin.

"You be good and go to sleep," said Manners.

"What time is it?"

"Nearly morning."

"Still storming?"

"No; stars out and warmer."

Aladdin thought a moment.

"Manners," he said, "please talk to me. How did you find me?"

"Simply enough," said Manners. "I took the senator's cutter out for
a little drive, and got lost. Then I heard somebody laughing, and I
stumbled over you and your horse; that's all. How the devil did you
manage to lose your saddle and bridle?"

"It was a dead horse," said Aladdin, and he shivered at the
recollection.

"Quite so," said Manners.

"It was the funniest thing," said Aladdin, and again he shuddered with
a kind of reminiscent revolt. "I pushed it, and it fell over frozen to
death." He was conscious of talking nonsense.

"Wait a minute, Manners," he said. "I'll be sensible in a minute."

Presently he told Manners about the horse.

"I saw alight just then," he said, "and I thought it was an angel."

"It was I," said Manners, naively.

"Yes, Manners, it was you," said Aladdin.

He thought about an angel turning out to be Manners for a long time.
Then a terrible recollection came to him, and, in a voice shaking with
remorse and self-incrimination, he cried:

"God help me, Manners, I would have let you freeze."

Manners pulled at his pipe.

"Manners," said Aladdin, "it's true I know it's true, because, for all I
knew, I was dying when I said it."

Manners shook his head.

"Oh, no," said Manners.

"Make me think that," said Aladdin, with a quaver. "Please make me think
that if you can, for, God help me, I think I would have let you freeze."

"When I found you," said Manners, "I--I was sorry that the Lord hadn't
sent somebody else to you, and me to somebody else. That was because you
always hated me with no very good reason, and a man hates to be hated,
and so, to be quite honest, I hated you back."

"Right," said Aladdin, "right."

Light began to come in through the windows, whose broken panes Manners
had stopped with crumpled wall-paper.

"But when I got you here," said Manners, "and began to work over you,
you stopped being Aladdin O'Brien, and were just a man in trouble."

"Yes," said Aladdin, "it must be like that. It's got to be like that."

"At first," said Manners, "I worked because it seemed the proper thing