arters for the better part of a month--the base of supplies
from which he made numerous prospecting tours into the mountains of the
interior. Had he paid his bill on leaving? Yes, there was no doubt about
that. He could even recall a certain pity for the unbusiness-like
scale of charges, and the lack of perception of opportunity, which
characterized the bill in question. He remembered now his impression
that Gafferson would never do any good. It would be interesting to know
what kind of an impression he, in turn, had produced on his thriftless
host. At any rate, there was no good reason why he should not find out.
He opened the door and went in.

The gardener barely looked up from his occupation, and drew aside to
let the newcomer pass with no sign of a gesture toward his cap. Thorpe
halted, and tried to look at the pots on the staging as if he knew about
such things.

"What are you doing?" he asked, in the tentative tone of one who is in
no need of information, but desires to be affable.

"Drying off the first lot of gloxinias," answered the other. "Some
people put 'em on their sides, but I like 'em upright, close to the
glass. It stands to reason, if you think about it."

"Why, certainly," said Thorpe, with conviction. In his mind he
contrasted the independence of Gafferson's manner with the practised
servility of the stable-yard--and thought that he liked it--and then
was not so sure. He perceived that there was no recognition of him. The
gardener, as further desultory conversation about his work progressed,
looked his interlocutor full in the face, but with a placid, sheep-like
gaze which seemed to be entirely insensible to variations in the human
species.

"How did you ever get back here to England?" Thorpe was emboldened to
ask at last. In comment upon the other's stare of puzzled enquiry, he
went on: "You're Gafferson, aren't you? I thought so. When I last saw
you, you were running a sort of half-way house, t'other side of Belize.
That was in '90."

Gafferson--a thick-set, squat man of middle age, with a straggling
reddish beard--turned upon him a tranquil but uninformed eye. "I suppose
you would have been stopping at Government House," he remarked. "That
was in Sir Roger Goldsworthy's time. They used to come out often to see
my flowers. And so you remembered my name. I suppose it was because of
the Gaffersoniana hybrids. There was a good bit in the papers about them
last spring." Thorpe nodded an assent w