er
had with diffidence suffered himself to be served, and had deferentially
lighted on one side the big cigar pressed upon him--"Well--and how's the
world been using you?"

"Not very handsomely, Mr. Thorpe," the other responded, in a hushed,
constrained tone.

"Oh, chuck the Misters!" Thorpe bade him. "Aren't we old pals, man?
You're plain Tavender, and I'm plain Thorpe."

"You're very kind," murmured Tavender, still abashed. For some
minutes he continued to reply dolefully, and with a kind of shamefaced
reluctance, to the questions piled upon him. He was in evil luck:
nothing had gone well with him; it had been with the greatest difficulty
that he had scraped together enough to get back to London on the chance
of obtaining some expert commission; practically he possessed nothing
in the world beyond the clothes on his back, and the contents of two old
carpet-bags--these admissions, by degrees, were wormed from him.

"But have you parted with the concession, then, that you bought from
me?" Thorpe suddenly asked him. "Help yourself to some more whiskey!"

Tavender sighed as he tipped the decanter. "It isn't any good," he
answered, sadly. "The Government repudiates it--that is, the Central
Government at Mexico. Of course, I never blamed you. I bought it with my
eyes open, and you sold it in perfect good faith. I never doubted that
at all. But it's not worth the paper it's written on--that's certain.
It's that that busted me--that, and some other things."

"Well--well!" said Thorpe, blankly. His astonishment was obviously
genuine, and for a little it kept him silent, while he pondered the
novel aspects of the situation thus disclosed. Then his eyes brightened,
as a new path outlined itself.

"I suppose you've got the papers?--the concession and my transfer to you
and all that?" he asked, casually.

"Oh, yes," replied Tavender. He added, with a gleam of returning
self-command--"That's all I have got."

"Let's see--what was it you paid me?--Three thousand eight hundred
pounds, wasn't it?"

Tavender made a calculation in mental arithmetic. "Yes, something like
that. Just under nineteen thousand dollars," he said.

"Well," remarked Thorpe, with slow emphasis, "I won't allow you to
suffer that way by me. I'll buy it back from you at the same price you
paid for it."

Tavender, beginning to tremble, jerked himself upright in his chair,
and stared through his spectacles at his astounding host. "You say"--he
gasped--