under his breath, and when the landlord had gone he fell to
talking of salmon with enthusiasm. "We must make a big day of it
to-morrow, dark to dark, you know. Thank Heaven, our beat's
down-stream, too." And thereafter he made frequent excursions to the
door, and bulletins on the weather were issued regularly.

Dinner over, we drew our chairs to the hearth, and fell to talk and the
slow consumption of tobacco. When two men from the ends of the earth
meet by a winter fire, their thoughts are certain to drift overseas.
We spoke of the racing tides off Vancouver, and the lonely pine-clad
ridges running up to the snow-peaks of the Selkirks, to which we had
both travelled once upon a time in search of sport. Thirlstone on his
own account had gone wandering to Alaska, and brought back some
bear-skins and a frost-bitten toe as trophies, and from his tales had
consorted with the finest band of rogues which survives unhanged on
this planet. Then some casual word took our thoughts to the south, and
our memories dallied with Africa. Thirlstone had hunted in Somaliland
and done mighty slaughter; while I had spent some never-to-be forgotten
weeks long ago in the hinterland of Zanzibar, in the days before
railways and game-preserves. I have gone through life with a keen eye
for the discovery of earthly paradises, to which I intend to retire
when my work is over, and the fairest I thought I had found above the
Rift valley, where you had a hundred miles of blue horizon and the
weather of Scotland. Thirlstone, not having been there, naturally
differed, and urged the claim of a certain glen in Kashmir, where you
may hunt two varieties of bear and three of buck in thickets of
rhododendron, and see the mightiest mountain-wall on earth from your
tent door. The mention of the Indian frontier brought us back to our
professions, and for a little we talked "shop" with the unblushing
confidence of those who know each other's work and approve it. As a
very young soldier Thirlstone had gone shooting in the Pamirs, and had
blundered into a Russian party of exploration which contained
Kuropatkin. He had in consequence grossly outstayed his leave, having
been detained for a fortnight by an arbitrary hospitality; but he had
learned many things, and the experience had given him strong views on
frontier questions. Half an hour was devoted to a masterly survey of
the East, until a word pulled us up.

"I went there in '99" Thirlstone was sa