“Of course you’re going to stay with me, old man?” said Eric, when he met me at Waterloo station next day. “You surely didn’t imagine I should let you go to an hotel?”

Nothing in these few words of the studied tone of unimpeachable politeness to which he had accustomed me at our last meeting. This was the hearty undergraduate greeting of old, and I needed no more to tell me that his sorrow on my account had dispersed the cloud that lay between us.

It was good to see him again; to feel the grasp of his strong hand, and read the look of welcome in his troubled eyes. And then we went to dine at ‘Simpson’s’ in reminiscence of the past, when I had had a pleasant balance to draw upon, and banks had not taken to breaking. And then for a long stroll and back again to his rooms.

“You see I’ve got them all ready for you, and the lobster supper that you always favoured, though how on earth you manage to sleep after it, passes my comprehension. And then we’ll chat on as in the good old days, and fancy ourselves undergraduates again, and that all this trouble is an evil dream. And remember that a room will always be kept ready for you in the future. Send me a wire when you want to use it, and the oftener you come and the longer you stay the better for me. But it’s late in the day of our friendship to be telling you all this, as if you hadn’t known it years and years ago.”All my vague misgivings had vanished before his welcome, and it has dwelt with me since as a pleasurable thought that Eric, I am sure, meant fairly by me then, and that for what happened later on between us, the blame in part must rest with me, who had spread, however unwittingly, a snare before his feet.

After supper we drew up our chairs side-by-side before the fire—for the autumn evenings had become chilly now in town—and discussed the situation from every possible view and bearing, without, I candidly admit, finding any means of bettering it.

Eric was far too wise to offer me monetary help. But his hand-grasp told me I might have had it for the asking—aye, anything he could have given me. And I grew cheerier and more hopeful of the future, and thought with thankfulness how much it means to any man to have just one true friend in life. How few of us can say as much, especially when life’s sun begins to verge towards its setting, and the friends we have made are gone before us, and ourselves have lost the will and opportunity to win us new ones.

To-night I was tasting this cup of happiness in fullest measure. Time for me had rolled backwards, and he and I were together again—the friend in whom I could see no change; the lad who in days gone by had slipped up with me from Cambridge for many an evening just like this.

The next morning I went to call upon my agents, after arranging with Eric to meet him in the Strand at the private gallery where his picture was on view.

In those early days there was little information, I knew, to be expected from them, and such as it was it only went to confirm my gloomy forecast. The bank, they told me, was irretrievably ruined, and all the capital it could command would infallibly be called up.

Afterwards I joined Eric in the Strand, and he took me into a room from which all natural light had been carefully excluded. And as I stood looking at a curtain which shrouded the farther wall, it suddenly rolled back, and under a perfect light, and with all the accessories that art could lend to its environment, I saw before me the picture that had made him famous.

It was in no wise a sensational subject. Only a precipitous rock, rent in twain by a huge fissure, through which I looked down upon a valley which opened and fell away in front of me. From its foot a mountain stream foamed and fretted down a steep incline. And on either side of the valley, wherever a projection or an eminence promised safety from the torrents that scored the declivities, tiny sparks of fire, few and far between, flickered from the cottage windows, with a pleasant suggestion of the cheeriness within. Crowning the precipice which occupied the foreground on the right hand of the picture, I could see the outline of the village church, where glowed a larger, ruddier flame, from the lamp, no doubt, which burned before the altar of the sanctuary.

It was a wonderful piece of work for a lad so young in years. I am no painter, and the defects there may have been in it were all invisible to me. But the cleverness of the composition, and the marvellous adjustment of the lights and shadows, flung by the afterglow upon the surrounding hills, could only have been inspired by genius. No wonder that his work had made him famous.

He had entitled it “Val Verde.”

“It commemorates a story, Harold,” he whispered—for there were visitors besides ourselves—“that has grown up around a picture which forms the altar-piece of the church. Whether the legend rests on any historic ground-work, I could never satisfactorily determine. I only know that versions of it, in many various forms, are current in most of the adjoining villages. But this evening, if you like, I will tell it to you precisely as it was told to me by the curÉ of the parish. True or untrue, it is interesting enough as a story, though I could wish we had fallen upon a more cheerful topic for the enlivenment of our last evening.”

As we were leaving the gallery, I bethought me of the picture which Reggie had unearthed for me at Cambridge.

“By the way, Eric,” I said, “I’ve got a picture, too, in my possession, on which I want your opinion. If you don’t mind the trouble, old man, I’ll send it up to you when I get home to-morrow. It’s only a copy, for I’ve seen the original. But it’s a fairly good one, unless I am much mistaken. And in these days, when I don’t know where to look for a five-pound note, anything, however small, will come in handy. So, if you think it’s worth a few pounds, please do the best you can for me, and I’ll be awfully grateful.”