efinable reports started up, spread and followed me. Out of
the skies a net of suspicion descended between me and my quite
reputable past. For no reason given, my fellow-practitioners
began to shun me.

"I had a bad case, and no money to carry it through. I have
heard, Roddy, that he let you into the secret of the island and
that you are like to prosper on it: and I wish you well. But I,
who brought him to it, lingering him to land--I, but for whose
treasured flask he would never have lived to see Santa Island--
could set up no claim on any of that wealth.

"I had deserved this. It was all quite right, and I make no
complaint. But I had to throw up Harley Street, and for two
years I steadily sank. In the end I came to know worse hunger
than I was prepared for. Though you won't have me at any price,
I think you would pity if I told you of some of the holes to
which I have crept to sleep.

"I suppose--and now I think of it, I might have borrowed some
comfort from the thought--I suppose that all the while, being
rich, Farrell had hired eyes to watch me. It is certain that he
ran across me--always at night, and always in evening dress.
Once, on the Embankment, as I was coiling on a bench, he came
down from the Savoy and along, bringing his dog for a walk.
The dog scented me and growled; but I lay out stiff, pretending
to sleep.

"Even when it came to a Salvation Army shelter, we were disturbed
by a company of the benevolent; Farrell one of them, in a furred
coat with an astrachan collar. He saw me stretched there with
closed eyes, and said that one half of the world never knows how
the other half lives.

"It was going like that with me when the War broke out.
Then--broken, beaten, and in rags--I put all pride in my pocket,
walked across the bridge to Silversmiths' College, rang in on
Travers, and demanded a job.

"Travers was shocked. . . . I could see also that he was
suspicious. Rumour had been at him, too. Finding him less than
frank, I turned more than proud: and, his back being up and his
conscience uneasy, he did what I could have pardoned in a weaker
man; lost his temper, to excuse himself in his own eyes for
treating me unjustly. He had scarcely spoken six words before I
detected the slime of Farrell's trail.