e stones of the road.

"Serious!" he cried. "Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these
damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One
comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well,
but I should think very little of a man who didn't keep something in
the background of his life that was more serious than all this
talking--something more serious, whether it was religion or only drink."

"Very well," said Gregory, his face darkening, "you shall see something
more serious than either drink or religion."

Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory again
opened his lips.

"You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you
have one?"

"Oh," said Syme with a beaming smile, "we are all Catholics now."

"Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion
involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to any
son of Adam, and especially not to the police? Will you swear that! If
you will take upon yourself this awful abnegation if you will consent
to burden your soul with a vow that you should never make and a
knowledge you should never dream about, I will promise you in return--"

"You will promise me in return?" inquired Syme, as the other paused.

"I will promise you a very entertaining evening." Syme suddenly took off
his hat.

"Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined. You say that
a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but I hope at least that he
is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and now, to swear as a Christian,
and promise as a good comrade and a fellow-artist, that I will not
report anything of this, whatever it is, to the police. And now, in the
name of Colney Hatch, what is it?"

"I think," said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, "that we will call a
cab."

He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the road. The
two got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the trap the address
of an obscure public-house on the Chiswick bank of the river. The cab
whisked itself away again, and in it these two fantastics quitted their
fantastic town.

CHAPTER II. THE SECRET OF GABRIEL SYME

THE cab pulled up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, into
which Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated themselves in
a close and dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained wooden table with one
wooden leg. The room was so small and dark, that very