never was any such thing as a transfer
of it to you. It's always been mine!"

Tavender gave his benefactor a purblind sort of wink. "Always belonged
to you? Why of course it did," he said cheerfully.

The other breathed a cautious prolonged sigh of relief "You'd better
light a fresh one, hadn't you?" he asked, observing with a kind of
contemptuous tolerance the old man's efforts to ignite a cigar which had
more than once unrolled like a carpenter's shaving in his unaccustomed
fingers, and was now shapelessly defiant of both draught and suction.
Tavender laughed to himself silently as he took a new cigar, and
puffed at the match held by his companion. The air of innocence and
long-suffering meekness was falling rapidly away from him. He put his
shabby boots out confidently to the fender and made gestures with his
glass as he talked.

"My mistake," he declared, in insistent tones, "was in not turning down
science thirty years ago and going in bodily for business. Then I should
have made my pile as you seem to have done. But I tried to do something
of both. Half the year I was assaying crushings, or running a level, or
analyzing sugars, for a salary, and the other half I was trying to do a
gamble with that salary on the strength of what I'd learned. You can't
ring the bell that way. You've got to be either a pig or a pup. You
can't do both. Now, for instance, if I'd come to London when you did,
and brought my money with me instead of buying your concession with
it----"

"Why, what good do you suppose you would have done?" Thorpe interrupted
him with good-natured brusqueness. "You'd have had it taken from you
in a fortnight! Why, man, do you know what London is? You'd have had no
more chance here than a naked nigger in a swamp-full of alligators."

"You seem to have hit it off," the other objected. "This is as fine a
house as I was ever in."

"With me it's different," Thorpe replied, carelessly. "I have the talent
for money-making. I'm a man in armour. The 'gators can't bite me, nor
yet the rattle-snakes."

"Yes--men are made up differently," Tavender assented, with
philosophical gravity. Then he lurched gently in the over-large chair,
and fixed an intent gaze upon his host. "What did you make your money
in?" he demanded, not with entire distinctness of enunciation. "It
wasn't rubber, was it?"

Thorpe shook his head. "There's no money in rubber. I'm entirely in
finance--on the Stock Exchange--dealing in difference