he jocular
early-bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed. And Plank, in no position
to be anything but flattered by such sans gene, laboriously and
gratefully splashed through his bath, wallowed amid the breakfast
plates, and mounted a hunter for long and apparently aimless gallops
with Mortimer.

His acquaintance among people who knew Mortimer being limited, he had
no means of determining the latter's social value except through hearsay
and a toadying newspaper or two. Therefore he was not yet aware of
Mortimer's perennial need of money; and when Mortimer laughingly alluded
to his poverty, Plank accepted the proposition in a purely comparative
sense, and laughed, too, his thrifty Dutch soul untroubled by
misgivings.

Meanwhile, Mortimer had come, among other things, on information; how
much, and precisely of what nature, he was almost too much ashamed to
admit definitely, even to himself. Still, the idea that had led him into
this sudden intimacy with Plank, vague or not, persisted; and he was
always hovering on the edge of hinting at something which might elicit a
responsive hint from the flattered master of Black Fells.

There was much about Plank that was unaffected, genuine, even simple,
in one sense; he cared for people for their own sakes; and only stubborn
adherence to a dogged ambition had enabled him to dispense with the
society of many people he might easily have cultivated and liked--people
nearer his own sort; and that, perhaps, was the reason he so readily
liked Mortimer, whose coarse fibre soon wore through the polish when
rubbed against by a closer, finer fibre. And Plank liked him aside
from gratitude; and they got on famously on the basis of such mutual
recognition. Then, one day, very suddenly, Mortimer stumbled on
something valuable--a thread, a mere clew, so astonishing that for
an instant it absolutely upset all his unadmitted theories and
calculations.

It was nothing--a vague word or two--a forced laugh--and the scared
silence of this man Plank, who had blundered on the verge of a
confidence to a man he liked.

A moment of amazement, of half-incredulous suspicion, of certainty; and
Mortimer pounced playfully upon him like a tiger--a big, fat, friendly,
jocose tiger:

"Plank, is that what you're up to!"

"Up to! Why, I never thought of such a--"

"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer. "If you could only see your face!"

And Beverly Plank, red as a beet, comfortably suffused with reassurance
unde