le said, laughing a bit. "And judge, then, how I
like it--when I have not seen it for ten years."

"Haven't seen New York for ten years?" Rufus Shepley gasped.

"A whole decade," Prale admitted.

"Been down in Honduras all that time?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you live to tell it? You are my idea of a real man!" Rufus Shepley
said.

Shepley took a cigar from his vest pocket, bit off the end, lighted it,
and puffed a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air. Rufus Shepley was a
man of fifty, and looked his age. If human being ever gave the
appearance of being the regulation man of big business affairs, Rufus
Shepley did.

Sidney Prale had held some conversation with him on board ship, but they
had not become very well acquainted, though they seemed to like each
other. Each man seemed to be holding back, waiting, trying to discover
in the other more qualities to like or dislike.

"Ten years," Sidney Prale went on thoughtfully. "It seems a long time,
but the years have passed swiftly."

"I always had an idea," Rufus Shepley said, "that a genuine white man
who went to one of those Central American countries turned bad after the
first year and went to the devil generally. But you don't look it."

"The idea is correct, at that, in some instances," Prale admitted. "Some
of them do turn bad."

"They get to drifting, eh? The climate gets into their blood. Do you
know what I think? I think that, in seven cases out of eight, it's a
case of a man wanting an excuse for loafing. I knew a chap once who went
down to that part of the world. Got to drinking too much, threw up his
job, used to loaf all the time, married some sort of a half-black woman
who had a bit of coin, and went to the dogs generally."

"Oh, there are many such," Sidney Prale admitted. "But the majority of
them are men who made some grave mistake somewhere else and got the idea
that life was merely existence afterward. A man must have an incentive
in any climate to make anything of himself--and down there the incentive
has to be stronger."

"I assume that you--er--had the proper incentive," Rufus Shepley said,
grinning.

"I don't know how some persons would look at the propriety of it. I
wanted to make a million dollars."

"Great Scott! Your ambition was a modest one, I must say. And you
managed to win out? Oh, I beg your pardon! It isn't any of my business,
of course!"

"That's all right," Prale answered good-naturedly. "I don't mind. I'm so
happy this mor