ghter. Took
her away from here. Only thing to do. But she couldn't stand it, and now
they're back again. He'll hang himself one of these days, if he don't
drink himself to death before. Good chap. Nasty when he's drunk."

Chaplin belched loudly.

"I'll go and put my head under the shower. I oughtn't to have had that
last cocktail. It's always the last one that does you in."

He looked uncertainly at the staircase as he made up his mind to go to
the cubby hole in which was the shower, and then with unnatural
seriousness got up.

"Pay you to cultivate Lawson," he said. "A well read chap. You'd be
surprised when he's sober. Clever too. Worth talking to."

Chaplin had told me the whole story in these few speeches.

When I came in towards evening from a ride along the seashore Lawson was
again in the hotel. He was heavily sunk in one of the cane chairs in the
lounge and he looked at me with glassy eyes. It was plain that he had
been drinking all the afternoon. He was torpid, and the look on his face
was sullen and vindictive. His glance rested on me for a moment, but I
could see that he did not recognise me. Two or three other men were
sitting there, shaking dice, and they took no notice of him. His
condition was evidently too usual to attract attention. I sat down and
began to play.

"You're a damned sociable lot," said Lawson suddenly.

He got out of his chair and waddled with bent knees towards the door. I
do not know whether the spectacle was more ridiculous than revolting.
When he had gone one of the men sniggered.

"Lawson's fairly soused to-day," he said.

"If I couldn't carry my liquor better than that," said another, "I'd
climb on the waggon and stay there."

Who would have thought that this wretched object was in his way a
romantic figure or that his life had in it those elements of pity and
terror which the theorist tells us are necessary to achieve the effect
of tragedy?

I did not see him again for two or three days.

I was sitting one evening on the first floor of the hotel on a verandah
that overlooked the street when Lawson came up and sank into a chair
beside me. He was quite sober. He made a casual remark and then, when I
had replied somewhat indifferently, added with a laugh which had in it
an apologetic tone:

"I was devilish soused the other day."

I did not answer. There was really nothing to say. I pulled away at my
pipe in the vain hope of keeping the mosquitoes away, and looked at