hing to anybody about his wife. And so he
slammed the door of his soul and presented an enigmatical front.

"There's nothing on my chest," he said. "Business downtown has kept me
here,--legal stuff and that sort of thing. But I'm free now. Got any
suggestions?"

Howard accepted this. If a pal was determined not to confide and get
invaluable advice, what was the use of going for him with a can opener?
But one good look at the face whose every expression he knew so well
convinced him that something was very much the matter. "Why, good
Lord," he said to himself, "the old thing looks as if he'd been working
night and day for an examination and had been plucked. I wonder which
of the two girls is at the back of all this,--the wife or the other?"
Rumors had reached his way about both.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I don't care," said Martin. "Any damn thing so long as it's something
with somebody. What's it matter?"

He didn't quite manage to hide the little quiver in his voice, and it
came to Howard Oldershaw for the first time how young they both were to
be floundering on the main road, himself with several entanglements and
money worries, his friend married and with another complication. They
were both making a pretty fine hash of things, it seemed, and just for
a moment, with something of boyishness that still remained behind his
sophistication, he wished that they were both back at Yale, unhampered
and unencumbered, their days filled with nothing but honest sport and
good lectures and the whole joy of life.

"It's like this with me, Martin," he said, with a rather rueful grin.
"I'm out of favor at home just now and broke to the wide. There are one
or two reasons why I should lie low for a while, too. How about going
out to your place in the country? I'll hit the wily ball with you and
exercise your horses, lead the simple life and, please God, lose some
flesh, and guarantee to keep you merry and bright in my well-known,
resilient way. What do you say, old son?"

Martin heartily appreciated Howard's sound method of swinging
everything round to himself and trying to make out that it was all on
his side to go out to the house in which Joan ought to be. He was not a
horseman or a golfer, and the simple life had few attractions for him.
Well, that was friendship.

"Thanks, old man," he said. "That's you to the life, but I vote we get
a change from golf and riding. Come down to Devon with me, and let's do
so