e a short cough, expressing incredulity.

"Well! Washington thought you were the favoured 'catch' and envied your
luck! Certainly she showed a great preference for you--"

"Can't you talk of something else?" interposed Seaton, impatiently.

Gwent gave him an amused side-glance.

"Why, of course I can!" he responded--"But I thought I'd tell you about
Jack--"

"I'm sorry!" said Seaton, hastily, conscious that he had been lacking
in sympathy--"He was your heir, I believe?"

"Yes,--he might have been, had he kept a bit straighter"--said
Gwent--"But heirs are no good anywhere or anyhow. They only spend what
they inherit and waste the honest work of a life-time. Is that your
prize palace?"

He pointed to the hut which they had almost reached.

"That's it!" answered Seaton--"And I prefer it to any palace ever
built. No servants, no furniture, no useless lumber--just a place to
live in--enough for any man."

"A tub was enough for Diogenes"--commented Gwent--"If we all lived in
his way or your way it would be a poor look-out for trade! However, I
presume you'll escape taxation here!"

Seaton made no reply, but led the way into his dwelling, offering his
visitor a chair.

"I hope you've had breakfast"--he said--"For I haven't any to give you.
You can have a glass of milk if you like?"

Gwent made a wry face.

"I'm not a good subject for primitive nourishment"--he said--"I've been
weaned too long for it to agree with me!"

He sat down. His eyes were at once attracted by the bowl of restless
fluid on the table.

"What's that?" he asked.

Roger Seaton smiled enigmatically.

"Only a trifle"--he answered--"Just health! It's a sort of
talisman;--germ-proof, dust-proof, disease-proof! No microbe of
mischief, however infinitesimal, can exist near it, and a few drops,
taken into the system, revivify the whole."

"If that's so, your fortune's made"--said Gwent, "Give your discovery,
or recipe, or whatever it is, to the world---"

"To keep the world alive? No, thank you!" And the look of dark scorn on
Seaton's face was astonishing in its almost satanic expression--"That
is precisely what I wish to avoid! The world is over-ripe and
over-rotten,--and it is over-crowded with a festering humanity that is
INhuman, and worse than bestial in its furious grappling for self and
greed. One remedy for the evil would be that no children should be born
in it for the next thirty or forty years--the relief would be
incalculable,-