WHEN Jerome returned to his seat, the serious look in Webster's hitherto laughing eyes challenged his immediate attention. “Now what's gone and broken loose?” he demanded.

“Neddy,” said John Stuart Webster gently, “do you remember my crossing my fingers and saying, 'King's X' when you came at me with that proposition of yours?”

“Yes. But I noticed you uncrossed them mighty quick when I told you the details of the job. You'll never be offered another like it.”

“I know, Neddy, I know. It just breaks my heart to have to decline it, but the fact of the matter is, I think you'd better give that job to your brother after all. At any rate, I'm not going to take it.”

“Why?” the amazed Jerome demanded. “Johnny, you're crazy in the head. Of course you'll take it.”

For answer Webster handed his friend the letter he had just received.

“Read that, old horse, and see if you can't work up a circulation,” he suggested.

Jerome adjusted his spectacles and read:

Calle de Concordia 19, Buenaventura,

Sobrante, C. A.

Dear John:

I would address you as “dear friend John,” did I but possess sufficient courage. In my heart of hearts you are still that, but after three years of silence, due to my stupidity and hardness of heart, it is, perhaps, better to make haste slowly.

To begin, I should like to be forgiven, on the broad general grounds that I am most almighty sorry for what I went and done! Am I forgiven? I seem to see your friendly old face and hear you answer “Aye,” and with this load off my chest at last I believe I feel better already.

I did not know until very recently what had become of you, and that that wretched Cripple Creek business had been cleared up at last. I met a steam-shovel man a month or two ago on the Canal. He used to be a machine-man in the Portland mine, and he told me the whole story.

Jack, you poor, deluded old piece of white meat, do you think for a moment that I held against you your testimony for the operators in Cripple Creek? You will never know how badly it broke me up when that Canal digger sprung his story of how you went the limit for my measly reputation after I had quit the company in disgrace. Still, it was not that which hurt me particularly. I thought you believed the charges and that you testified in a firm belief that I was the guilty man, as all of the circumstantial evidence seemed to indicate. I thought this for three long, meagre years, old friend, and I'm sorry. After that, I suppose there isn't any need for me to say more, except that you are an old fool for not saying you were going to spend your money and your time and reputation trying to put my halo back on straight! I doubt if I was worth it, and you knew that; but let it pass, for we have other fish to fry.

The nubbin of the matter is this: There is only one good gold mine left in this weary world—and I have it. It's the sweetest wildcat lever struck, and we stand the finest show in the world of starving to death if we tackle it without sufficient capital to go through. (You will notice that I am already—and unconsciously—employing the plural pronoun. How rapidly the old habits return with the old friendships rehabilitated!) It will take at least thirty thousand dollars, and we ought to have double that to play safe. I do not know whether you have, or can raise, sixty cents, but at any rate I am going to put the buck up to you and you can take a look.

Here are the specifications. Read them carefully and then see if there is anybody in the U. S. A. whom you can interest to the tune mentioned above. We could probably get by with thirty thousand, but I would not jeopardize anybody's money by tackling it with less.

Jack, I have a mining concession. It is low-grade—a free-milling gold vein—twelve feet of ore between good solid walls on a contact between Andesite and Silurian limestone. The ore is oxidized, and we can save ninety per cent, of the values on amalgamating plates without concentrating or cyaniding machinery. I have had my own portable assay outfit on the ground for a month, and you can take my opinion for what it is worth when I assure you that this concession is a winner, providing the money is forthcoming with which to handle it.

This is a pretty fair country, Jack—if you survive long enough to get used to it. At first you think it's Paradise; then you grow to hate it and know it for hell with the lid off; and finally all your early love for it returns and you become what I am now—a tropical tramp! There is only one social stratum lower than mine, and that's the tropical beachcomber. I am not that—yet; and will not be if my landlady will continue to listen to my blandishments. She is a sweet soul, with a divine disposition, and I am duly grateful.

I would tell you all about the geography, topography, flora and fauna of Sobrante, but you can ascertain that in detail by consulting any standard encyclopedia. Governmentally the country is similar to its sister republics. The poor we have always with us; also a first-class, colorado-maduro despot in the political saddle, and it's a cold day indeed when two patriots, two viva's and a couple of old Long Tom Springfield rifles cannot upset the Sobrante apple cart. We have the usual Governmental extravagance in the matter of statues to countless departed “liberators” in all the public squares, and money is no object. It is depreciated shin-plasters, and I had to use a discarded sugar-barrel to hold mine when I arrived and changed four hundred pesos oro into the national currency. If a waiter brings you a jolt of hooch, you're stingy if you tip him less than a Sobrante dollar.

We have a Malicon along the bay shore and back again, with a municipal bandstand in the middle thereof, upon which the fine city band of Buenaventura plays nightly those languid Spanish melodies that must have descended to us from the Inquisition. If you can spare the cash, send me a bale of the latest New York rags and a banjo, and I'll start something. I have nothing else to do until I hear from you, save shake dice at The Frenchman's with the PrÉsidente, who has nothing else to do except lap up highballs and wait for the next drawing of the lottery. I asked him for a job to tide me over temporarily, and he offered me a portfolia! I could have been Minister of Finance!

I declined, from a constitutional inability, inherent in the Irish, to assimilate a joke from a member of an inferior race.

We haven't had a revolution for nearly six months, but we have hopes.

There are some white men here, neither better nor worse. We tolerate each other.

I am addressing you at the Engineers' Club, in the hope that my letter may reach you there, or perhaps the secretary will know your address and forward it to you. If you are foot-loose and still entertain a lingering regard for your old pal, get busy on this mining concession P. D. Q. Time is the essence of the contract, because I am holding on to the thin edge of nothing, and if we have a change of government I may lose even that. I need you, John Stuart Webster, worse than I need salvation. I enclose you a list of equipment required.

If you receive this letter and can do anything for me, please cable. If you cannot, please cable anyway. It is needless for me to state that the terms of division are as you make them, although I think fifty-fifty would place us both on Easy Street for the rest of our days. Do let me hear from you, Jack, if only to tell me the old entente cordiale still exists. I know now that I was considerable of a heedless pup a few years ago and overlooked my hand quite regularly, but now that I have a good thing I do not know of anybody with whom I care to share it except your own genial self. Please let me hear from you.

Affectionately,

Billy.

Jerome finished reading this remarkable communication; then with infinite amusement he regarded John Stuart Webster over the tops of his glasses as one who examines a new and interesting species of bug.

“So Billy loves that dear Sobrante, eh?” he said with abysmal sarcasm. “Jack Webster, listen to a sane man and be guided accordingly. I was in this same little Buenaventura once. I was there for three days, and I wouldn't have been there three minutes if I could have caught a steamer out sooner. Of all the miserable, squalid, worthless, ornery, stinking holes on the face of God's green footstool, Sobrante is the worst—if one may judge it by its capital city. Jack, there is an old bromide that describes aptly the republic of Sobrante, and it's so trite I hesitate to repeat it—but I will, for your benefit. Sobrante is a country where the flowers are without fragrance, the men without honour, and the women without virtue. It is hot and unhealthy, and the mosquitoes wear breechclouts; and when they bite you, you die. You get mail three times a month, and there isn't a white man in the whole Roman-candle republic that a gentleman would associate with.”

“You forget Billy Geary,” Webster reminded him gently.

“He's a boy. What does his judgment amount to? Are you going to chase off to this God-forsaken fever-hole at the behest of a lad scarcely out of his swaddling clothes? Jack Webster, surely you aren't going to throw yourself away—give up the sure thing I offer you—to join Billy Geary in Sobrante and finance a wildcat prospect without a certificate of title attached. Why, Jack, my dear boy, don't you know that if you develop your mine to-morrow and get it paying well, the first 'liberator' may take it away from you or tax you for the entire output?”

“We'll have government protection, Neddy. This will be American capital, and if they get fresh, our Uncle Sam can send a warship, can't he?”

“He can—but he won't. Are you and Billy Geary of sufficient importance at home or abroad to warrant the vast consumption of coal necessary to send a battleship to protect your dubious prospect-hole? Be reasonable. What did you wire that confounded boy?”

“That I was coming.”

“Cable him you've changed, your mind. We'll send him some money to come home, and you can give him a good job under you. I'll O. K. the voucher and charge it to your personal expense account.”

“That's nice of you, old sport, and I thank you kindly. I'll talk to Billy when I arrive in Buenaventura, and if the prospect doesn't look good to me, I'll argue him out of it and we'll come home.”

“But I want you now. I don't want you to go away.”

“You promised me thirty days in which to have a good time——”

“So I did. But is this having a good time? How about that omelette soufflÉ all blazing with blue fire, and that shower-bath and the opera and mushing through the art centres, and Sousa's band——”

“They have a band down in Buenaventura. Billy says so.”

“It plays 'La Paloma' and 'Sobre las Olas' and 'La Golondrina' and all the rest of them. Jack, you'll go crazy listening to it.”

“Oh, I don't want any omelette soufflÉ, and I had a bath before I left the hotel. I was just hearing myself talk, Neddy,” the culprit protested weakly. “Let me go. I might come back. But I must go. I want to see Billy.”

“You just said a minute ago you'd turned the forty-year post,” Jerome warned him. “And you're now going to lose a year or two more in which you might better be engaged laying up a foundation of independence for your old age. You will get out of Sobrante with the price of a second-class ticket on a vile fruit boat, and you'll be back here panhandling around for a job at a quarter of what I am offering you. For Heaven's sake, man, don't be a fool.”

“Oh, but I will be a fool,” John Stuart Webster answered; and possibly, by this time, the reader has begun to understand the potency of his middle name—the Scotch are notoriously pig-headed, and Mr. Webster had just enough oatmeal in his blood to have come by that centre-fire name honestly. “And you, you poor old horse, you could not possibly understand why, if you lived to be a million years old.”

He got up from his chair to the full height of his six-feet-one, and stretched one hundred and ninety pounds of bone and muscle.

“And so I shall go to Sobrante and lose all of this all-important money, shall I?” he jeered. “Then, by all the gods of the Open Country, I hope I may! Old man, you have browsed through a heap of literature in your day, but I doubt if it has done you any good. Permit me to map out a course of reading for you. Get a copy of 'Paradise Lost' and another of 'Cyrano de Bergerac.' In the former you will find a line running somewhat thusly: 'What tho' the cause be lost, all is not lost!' And in the immortal work of Monsieur Rostand, let me recommend one little page—about fifteen lines. Read them, old money-grubber, and learn! On second thought, do not read them. Those lines would only be wasted on you, for you have become afflicted with hypertrophy of the acquisitive sense, which thins the blood, dwarfs the understanding, stunts the perception of relative values, and chills the feet. .

“Let me foretell your future for the next twenty years, Neddy. You will spend about forty per cent, of your time in this lounging-room, thirty per cent, of it in piling up a bank-roll, out of which you will glean no particular enjoyment, and the remaining thirty per cent, you will spend in bed. And then some bright morning your heart-beat will slow down almost imperceptibly, and the House Committee will order a wreath of autumn leaves hung just above Number Four domino table, and it will remain there until the next annual house-cleaning, when some swamper 'will say, 'What the devil is this stuff here for?' and forthwith he will tear it down and consign it to the fireplace.”

“Ba-a-li,” growled Jerome.

“The truth hurts, I know,” Webster pursued relentlessly, “but hear me to the bitter end. And then presently shall enter the club no less a personage than young John Stuart Webster, even as he entered it to-day. He will be smelling of country with the hair on, and he will glance toward Table Number Four and murmur sympathetically: 'Poor old Jerome! I knowed him good!' Did I hear you say 'Huh!' just then? I thank thee for teaching me that word. Take careful note and see I use it correctly—'Huh!' Dad burn you, Neddy, I'm not a Methuselah. I want some fun in life. I want to fight and be broke and go hungry and then make money for the love of making it and spending it, and I want to live a long time yet. I have a constitutional weakness for foregathering with real he-men, doing real he-things, and if I'm to be happy, I'll just naturally have to be the he-est of the whole confounded pack! I want to see the mirage across the sagebrush and hear it whisper: 'Hither, John Stuart Webster! Hither, you fool, and I'll hornswaggle you again, as in an elder day I horn,swaggled you before.'”

Jerome shook his white thatch hopelessly.

“I thought you were a great mining engineer, John,” he said sadly, “but you're not. You're a poet. You do not seem to care for money.”

“Well,” Webster retorted humorously, “it isn't exactly what you might term a ruling passion. I like to make it, but there's more fun spending it. I've made a hundred thousand dollars, and now I want to go blow it—and I'm going to. Do not try to argue with me. I'm a lunatic and I will have my way. If I didn't go tearing off to Sobrante and join forces with Billy Geary, there to play the game, red or black, I'd feel as if I had done something low and mean and small. The boy's appealed to me, and I have made my answer. If I come back alive but broke, you know in your heart you'll give me the best job you have.”

“You win,” poor Jerome admitted.

“Hold the job open thirty days. At the end of that period I'll give you a definite answer, Neddy.”

“There is no Balm in Gilead,” Jerome replied sadly. “Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.”

“It's six-thirty,” Webster suggested. “Let's eat. Last call for that omelette soufflÉ, and we'll go to a show afterward. By the way, Neddy, how do you like this suit? Fellow in Salt Lake built it for me—ninety bucks!”

But Jerome was not interested in clothing and similar foolishness. He only knew that he had lost the services of a mining engineer for whom he had searched the country for a month. He rose, dusting the cigar ashes from his vest, and followed sulkily.

Despite the evidences of “grouch” which Jerome brought to the dinner table with John Stuart Webster, he was not proof against the latter's amazing vitality and boundless good spirits. The sheer weight of the Websterian optimism and power of enjoying simple things swept all of Jerome's annoyance from him as a brisk breeze dissipates the low-lying fog that hides a pleasant valley, and ere the second cocktail had made its appearance, the president of the Colorado Consolidated Mines Company, Limited, was doing his best to help Webster enjoy this one perfect night snatched from the grim processional of sunrise and sunset that had passed since last he had dallied with the fleshpots—that were to pass ere he should dally with them again according to his peculiar nature and inclination.

Lovingly, lingeringly, Mr. Webster picked his way through the hors d'ouvres, declared against the soup as too filling, mixed the salad after a recipe of his own, served it and consumed it prior to the advent of the entrÉe, which if not the fashion in the West, at present, has not as yet gone entirely out of fashion. He revelled in breast of pheasant, with asparagus tips, and special baked potato; he thrilled with champagne at twelve dollars the quart, and a tender light came into his quizzical glance at sight of a brick of ice cream in four colours; he cheered for the omelette soufflÉ. In the end he demanded a tiny cheese fit for active service, cracked himself a peck of assorted nuts, and with a pot of black coffee and the best cigars possible of purchase in Denver, he leaned back at his ease and forgot the theatre in the long-denied delight of yarning with his old friend.

At one o'clock next morning they were still seated in the cosy grill, smoking and talking. Jerome looked at his watch.

“Great grief, Johnny!” he declared. “I must be trotting along. Haven't been out this late in years.”

“It's the shank of the evening, Neddy,” Webster pleaded, “and I'm hungry again. We'll have a nice broiled lobster, with drawn butter—eh, Ned? And another quart of that '98?”

“My liver would never stand it. I'd be in bed for a week,” Jerome protested. “See you at the club to-morrow afternoon before you leave, I presume.”

“If I get through with my shopping in time,” Webster answered, and reluctantly abandoning the lobster and accessories, he accompanied Jerome to the door and saw him safely into a taxicab.

“Sure you won't think it over, Jack, and give up this crazy proposition?” he pleaded at parting.

Webster shook his head. “I sniff excitement and adventure and profit in Sobrante, Neddy, and I've just got to go look-see. I'm like an old burro staked out knee-deep in alfalfa just now. I won't take kindly to the pack—-”

“And like an old burro, you won't be happy until you've sneaked through a hole in the fence to get out into a stubble-field and starve.” Jerome swore halfheartedly and promulgated the trite proverb that life is just one blank thing after the other—an inchoate mass of liver and disappointment!

“Do you find it so?” Webster queried sympathetically.

Suspecting that he was being twitted, Jerome looked up sharply, prepared to wither Webster with that glance. But no, the man was absolutely serious; whereupon Jerome realized the futility of further argument and gave John Stuart Webster up for a total loss. Still, he could not help smiling as he reflected how Webster had planned a year of quiet enjoyment and Fate had granted him one brief evening. He marvelled that Webster could be so light-hearted and contented under the circumstances.

Webster read his thoughts. “Good-bye, old man,” he said, and extended his hand. “Don't worry about me. Allah is always kind to fools, my friend; sorrow is never their portion. I've led rather a humdrum life. I've worked hard and never had any fun or excitement to speak of, and in answering Billy's call I have a feeling that I am answering the call of a great adventure.”

He did not know how truly he spoke, of course, but if he had, that knowledge would not have changed his answer.