are
you going to do with it, after you've got it?" he demanded, almost with
sharpness.

The Scotchman, after a surprised instant, smiled. "Oh, I'll just keep my
hands on it," he assured him, lightly.

"That isn't what I mean," Thorpe said, groping after what he did
mean, with sullen tenacity, among his thoughts. His large, heavy face
exhibited a depressed gravity which attracted the other's attention.

"What's the matter?" Semple asked quickly. "Has anything gone wrong with
you?"

Thorpe slowly shook his head. "What better off do you think you'll be
with six figures than you are with five?" he pursued, with dogmatic
insistence.

Semple shrugged his shoulders. He seemed to have grown much brighter
and gayer of mood in this past twelvemonth. Apparently he was somewhat
stouter, and certainly there was a mellowed softening of his sharp
glance and shrewd smile. It was evident that his friend's mood somewhat
nonplussed him, but his good-humour was unflagging.

"It's the way we're taught at school," he hazarded, genially. "In all
the arithmetics six beats five, and seven beats six."

"They're wrong," Thorpe declared, and then consented to laugh in a
grudging, dogged way at his friend's facial confession of puzzlement.
"What I mean is--what's the good of piling up money, while you can't
pile up the enjoyments it will buy? What will a million give you, that
the fifth of it, or the tenth of it, won't give you just as well?"

"Aye," said Semple, with a gleam of comprehension in his glance. "So
you've come to that frame of mind, have you? Why does a man go on and
shoot five hundred pheasants, when he can eat only one?"

"Oh, if you like the mere making of money, I've nothing more to say,"
Thorpe responded, with a touch of resentment. "I've always thought of
you as a man like myself, who wanted to make his pile and then enjoy
himself."

The Scotchman laughed joyously. "Enjoy myself! Like you!" he cried.
"Man, you're as doleful as a mute at a laird's funeral! What's come over
you? I know what it is. You go and take a course of German waters----"

"Oh, that be damned!" Thorpe objected, gloomily. "I tell you I'm all
right. Only--only--God! I've a great notion to go and get drunk."

Colin Semple viewed his companion with a more sympathetic expression.
"I'm sorry you're so hipped," he said, in gentle tones. "It can't be
more than some passing whimsy. You're in no real trouble, are you?--no
family trouble?"

Thorpe shook