't the foggiest notion. He relapsed
into a moody silence, wishing the club at the bottom of the sea and
himself back at Medicine Bow, where men pronounced words in the way they
were spelt--more or less.

Jim's career in that club was anything but smooth. Under the wing of
Cholmondeley he was saved from absolute ostracism. Two weeks of utter
purgatory were lived through, but Cholmondeley was staunch. Every day he
turned up at the club and bade Jim, on peril of his life, do likewise.

"Stick it out, Conlan," he argued. "They're expecting you to run away and
die with humiliation. When they discover you are not a--what was the word
you used?--ah--quitter--they'll begin to appreciate you."

Jim hung on. Even when Cholmondeley was not present he used the club. His
personality began to have effect, and he soon made two or three firm
friends. One of these was the Honorable Claude Featherstone, a healthy,
good-looking youth, without a trace of snobbishness or social pride in his
composition. He had been the first to come to Jim with extended hand.

"You're American, aren't you?"

"Nope, I'm English all right, but America's my country."

Claude's eyes traveled over Jim's muscular figure.

"Ye gods! they breed 'em big where you come from. I don't think I'll try
catch-as-catch-can with you. What do you think of this menagerie of ours?
That fat man over there is the Duke of Aberdale. If he comes and tells
you a tale about having left his purse at home--beware!"

Claude's acquaintanceship ripened into intimate friendship. It may have
been pure hero-worship, but the fact remained that he thought Jim the
finest specimen of manhood he had ever known. Jim, on the other hand,
began to drop a few of his early prejudices. He came to realize that all
men have something in common, and that accident of birth placed no
insuperable bar between one and another. Once penetrate that icy reserve,
and more often than not there was a stout heart behind it.

Jim began to get popular. It was rumored he was fabulously wealthy--a
slight exaggeration--and this helped him through, for the money-worship
fetish prevailed even among "noble lords." Cholmondeley, who knew all the
ropes in this intricate mesh of British social life, intimated that a
peerage might be bought for L50,000. But Jim wasn't "taking any of that
dope."

"It won't make my blood any bluer, I guess," he said.

In two months he had thoroughly established himself--a plebeian had tak