's kit. 'You must puy
for him a jeap, useful bordmandeau, and jarge id to me. I shall sdop it
out of his wages,' which of course he never did.

Mr. Warr presented himself at Darco's lodging next morning wrapped in
a perfume of gin and cloves. He laid upon the table a wordy document in
foolscap with a receipt stamp in one corner, and read it aloud in his
own breathless chuckle. It set forth that whereas he, the undersigned
William Treherne Macfarvel Warr, of the one part, late of, et cetera,
had entered into an engagement with George Darco, Esq., et cetera, et
cetera, of the other part, to such and such an effect of polysyllabic
rigmarole, he, the aforesaid and undersigned, did seriously and truly
covenant with the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of et cetera, et
cetera, all over again, not to drink or imbibe or partake of any form of
alcoholic liquor, whether distilled or fermented, until such time as the
agreement or engagement between the aforesaid and undersigned on the one
part, and the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of the other part, should
end, cease, and determine. He signed this document with a great
sprawling flourish, and Darco and Paul having appended their names to
it also, Mr. Warr wrote the date of the transaction across the receipt
stamp, and handed the paper to his employer with a solemn bow.

'You haf peen zaying goot-bye to the dear greature,' said Darco; 'I can
see that.'

'In the words of Othello, sir,' said Mr. Warr: '"I kissed her ere I
killed her."' He smiled self-consciously, but instantly grew grave
again. 'You know me, Mr. Darco. You have my highly superior word. I
never go back on it, sir.'

Mr. Warr kept his word, but he grew insufferably self-righteous, and
preached total abstinence to everybody, from Darco to the call-boy. He
atoned for this unconsciously by the longing calculations he made.

'I have consulted the almanac,' he confided to Paul; 'it is two hundred
and seventy-one days to my next drink.'

After this he offered a figure almost daily: 'Two seventy. A dry
journey, Mr. Armstrong.''Two fifty, sir, two fifty. The longest lane
must turn, sir.' Then, after a long spell of yearning: 'Only two hundred
now, sir. I should like to obliterate two hundred. But a Warr's word is
sacred.'

'Now,' said Paul one day, 'why don't you take advantage of this sober
spell to cure yourself of the craving, in place of looking forward to
the next outburst and counting the days between? Why don't yo