t's not stand here all night; come to dinner with me, can't
you? We'll have a good Alumni chat; we don't bump into each other very
often."

He felt horribly hypocritical, yet this was the only way.

"You haven't had dinner, have you?" he went on, when Lincoln hesitated a
bit.

"No. I'll be glad to, thank you, Phil. Where do you go?"

"Let's try Sanguinetti's for the fun of the thing. We can talk down
there, and it won't break us, either."

They found a corner table in the restaurant. The room wore the quiet
look of Monday evening, the calm that follows the storm of Sunday, when
the place rocks with post-picnic revelry. A squat negro, perched on the
edge of a serving-table by the wall, sang vociferously to a resonant
banjo. Now and then a party of swarthy Latins joined in mildly when the
selections incurred their favor.

The two college men found it easy chatting. Williamson's dollar had
brought a very good dinner, particularly the chicken and the tortillas;
the claret was abundant and not half bad when jollied with seltzer. He
was trusting to Lincoln for tobacco.

Still the physician could not bring himself to the point toward which
the dinner was intended to smooth the road. The "Dago red" had mellowed
them both and they talked merrily of the days at Palo Alto, bringing up
one good memory after another, drifting gradually to an exchange of
Alumni personals of which the newspaper man furnished the larger part.
They talked of the men their young University had sent into the distant
parts of the world, youngsters running mines in the Antipodes, with fat
salaries to keep up their courage; of the little Stanford colony in
Western Australia and the Pioneers in China. There were a good many for
so new a college. Then there were the commonplaces who were doing well
at home. The thought of bringing the serious side of his own case into
this chat gave Williamson a chill. It was a foolish bit of pride, but it
was getting harder every minute to down it. He deftly turned the subject
his way.

"It isn't all prosperity, though. I've noticed that some of them seem to
be up against it lately--just hard luck stories, I suppose. There's
Rawdon, for example."

Lincoln leaned back comfortably in his chair.

"Let me tell you a case that has come under my notice lately and see
what you think of it," he said. "I won't mention names, but it's about a
man we both knew at College. He had a place on the paper, the
_Chronicle_, and du