tand the devil of a lot about
hatred by this time--more than you will ever begin to guess. But you
taught me, anyhow, this much about friendship, that I couldn't bear
to go along with you without your knowing every atom of the truth.
That means, we're going to be clean cuts, when I've done. . . .
You'll loathe the tale. But, damn it, you shall respect me for this,
that I cut clean, for old sake's sake, and wiped up the account,
before we parted as strangers and I started life afresh."

"All this is pretty mysterious, Jack," said I. "You know that, for
all the hurt he'd done you, I shied out of helping your pursuit of
Farrell. . . . Tell me, what happened to Farrell? Went down in the
_Eurotas_, I guess, and so squared accounts. That's what you mean--
eh?--by your clean cut and starting life afresh? . . . If so, for
your sake I'm glad of it."

"He didn't go down in the _Eurotas_," Foe answered gravely: "As a
matter of fact I dragged him on board one of the boats with my own
hands."

"What?" said I. "Farrell another survivor?"

"Upon my word," he answered, lighting a cigarette, "I can't swear to
Farrell's being alive or dead. Probably he's dead; but anyway I've
no further use for him, and that's where the clean cut comes in.
I had to quit hold of him because a woman beat me. . . . Now sit
quiet and listen."

FOE'S NARRATIVE.

"Did you know that Farrell had married? . . . Yes, at San Ramon, a
little portless place some way down the coast of Peru. The woman was
a Peruvian and owned a banana-strip there, left to her by her first
husband, a drunkard, in part-compensation for having ill-used and
beaten her.

"When I ran Farrell to earth there, after he'd given me the slip for
twelve months and more, this woman had married him and almost made a
new man of him. In another month or so I don't doubt she'd have
converted him into man enough to tell her all the truth, and let her
deliver him.

"As it was, he passed me off for his friend--the ass! . . .
I shipped with them, and we worked down the coast, by fruit-ship and
sloop, to Valparaiso, intending for Sydney. . . . Now at this point I
might easily make myself out a calculating villain. Farrell was
enamoured to feebleness, and to make love to his Santa was an
opportunity cast into my lap by the gods. . . . But actually, before
I could even meditate this simple villainy, I had fallen in love with
her because I couldn't help it.

"N