t! Can you tell me where you slept?"

Pocket looked round and pointed.

"Behind that bush."

"Have you left nothing there?"

"Yes; my bag and hat!"

In his state it took him some time to go and fetch them; he was nearly
suffocating when he came creeping back, his shoulders up to his ears.

"Stop! I see something else. Is that medicine-bottle yours?
There--catching the sun."

"It was."

"Bring it."

"It's empty."

"Bring it!"

Pocket obeyed. The strange man was standing on a chair behind the palings,
waiting to help him over, with a wary eye upon the path. But no third
creature was in sight except the insensate sprawler in the dew. Pocket
surmounted the obstacle, he knew not how; he was almost beside himself in
the throes of his attack. Later, he feared he must have been lifted down
like a child; but this was when he was getting his breath upon a seat.
They had come some little distance very slowly, and Pocket had received
such support from so muscular an arm as to lend colour to his humiliating
suspicion.

His grim companion spoke first.

"Well, I'm sorry for you. But I feel for your doctor too. I am one
myself."

Pocket ignored the somewhat pointed statement.

"I'll never forgive the brute!" he panted.

"Come, come! He didn't send you to sleep in the Park."

"But he took away the only thing that does me any good."

"What's that?" >

"Cigarettes d'Auvergne."

"I never heard of them."

"They're the only thing to stop it, and he took away every one I had."

But even as he spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced from
his bag, but lacked the moral courage to light, in the train. He had
slipped it into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt for it
feverishly. He gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the palpable
thing, and he drew forth a flattened cylinder the size of a cigarette and
the colour of a cigar. The boy had to bite off both ends; the man was
ready with the match. Pocket drank the crude smoke down like water,
coughed horribly, drank deeper, coughed the tears into his eyes, and was
comparatively cured.

"And your doctor forbids a sovereign remedy!" said his companion. "I
cannot understand him, and I'm a doctor myself." His voice and look were
deliberate even for him. "My name is Baumgartner," he added, and made a
pause. "I don't suppose you know it?"

"I'm not sure I don't," replied Pocket, swelling with breath and
gratitude; but in