Never be it said that fate itself could awe the soul of Fogg. Next day, when Handy called on him, he found his irrepressible friend preparing to saunter forth. That he failed to appreciate the humiliation of the previous evening there was not the slightest reason to believe. His restless spirit, however, was too strong to compel him willingly to remain indoors. He was nothing, if not active. In fact, he was miserable unless when employed in some optimistic scheme. No matter how impracticable it might appear to others, he invariably perceived a means to circumvent its difficulties. He believed in taking the biggest kind of chance on the smallest possibility of success. He was a remarkably unique proposition. "Hello, hello!" exclaimed Handy. "What's all this about? Up and dressed. Say, don't you know you're a sick man?" Fogg gazed at his friend more in surprise than anger, and turned his head aside. "Did you hear what I said? You don't mean to tell me that you are going out in the streets to-day?" "Why not?" replied Fogg. "After what took place last night?" "I must, you know!" "With a busted blood-vessel in your innards and a--a--a----" "Oh, come now, Handy, this thing has gone far enough. I appreciate all you did for me in an emergency, but there's no necessity for keeping up the deception any longer. I tell you I have an important engagement----" "Hold! Avast heaving and take a hitch," interrupted the veteran. "Give me no more of that important engagement business in mine. I have some say in this matter, I have." "You have--and how, pray?" "Well, I'll give it you, and straight, too." "Go on, then." "Well, you were to have taken a benefit last night, weren't you?" "I'm listening." "An' you didn't, did you?" "Well, no--not exactly a--benefit," replied Fogg slowly, with a sickly smile. "And why didn't you?" "Well, you are aware of the reason as well as I," Fogg answered, slightly irritated; "because I didn't have the necessary funds to carry out my plans, therefore----" "Rubbish and stuff!" retorted Handy contemptuously. "You always get things mixed." "What do you mean?" inquired the mystified Fogg, looking more perplexed than ever. "I do not quite understand you!" "No, I didn't expect you would. Not be able to give a show without funds! Fiddlesticks! You make me tired. Darn it! Any one could do the turn with funds, and if you had the funds you wouldn't need a benefit--unless, indeed, you needed them to take a pleasure trip to Europe or to buy an automobile. But the man who can pull off a venture of that kind I regard as a financier; a man to be respected; a man of mettle--I mean the kind of mettle that's next door to genius, so to speak. By the way, old man, how do you spell that mettle--mettle or metal?" "I would spell it B-R-A-S-S."