'Hold hard there, stranger!' cried a deep laughing voice, penetrated by a preposterous Yankee accent. 'You'd better keep your shirt on, I guess. If carving livers is your game, I'm thar; but----' 'Floyd!' 'Hullo, Tom! Ha, ha, ha! Why, you looked as wicked as a catamount for a moment.--Dear old chap, how goes it?' We had grasped hands; but the next instant we threw our arms round each other, and hugged each other like a couple of Germans. Floyd had grown an enormous moustache and was as thin and almost as brown as an Indian; but he was the same old Floyd, lazy, audacious, and full of fun. We sat down and gazed at one another in silence for more than a minute. 'How did you get here?' I asked at length. 'Well, I dropped round from the plantation. Tired of niggers--thought I'd take a rest. Want my portrait painted.' 'I never was so glad to see a fellow in my life!' 'So I thought, from the way you opened that door.' 'Six years since we parted, Floyd!' 'We never parted at all, if I remember right. You sneaked out of it--too proud to say good-bye to a purse-proud aristocrat like me, I suppose. Much obliged to you for the legacy, all the same.' 'What do you mean?' 'Nothing particular. I only found you out about three months ago. However, we'll come to that presently. Been enjoying yourself?' 'Oh, I'm all right--at least, until within the last two or three days,' I added, a little embarrassed. 'Ah! Well, you know you always were an eccentric chap; and it looks as if you hadn't changed much, so far as that goes. When a man with twelve thousand a year in the three-per-cents. takes to living in a German attic on six shillings a day, and painting pictures that won't sell for a living ... eh?' 'The fact is, I lost a good deal of money--after you left, you know: and--well, I see you must have heard something about it.' 'Me? Oh, no, don't imagine such a thing,' returned Floyd, with a lazy sparkle in his long mischievous eyes. 'I never hear anything, and never suspect anything; I just take things as they come, and never stop to ask where they come from. It wouldn't do, you see; I have such extraordinary luck. It isn't every man, I guess, who would have the luck to inherit a fortune of a million or so from a fellow who didn't know of his existence--and who thought all the time he was leaving it to somebody else. But, bless you! I think nothing of a thing like that.' 'What sort of a notion have you got into your head now?' 'A notion that you're a hypocrite, for one thing. But never mind for the present; time enough for me to walk into you to-morrow. I say, Tom, haven't you anything to wet a fellow's whistle with? Where I hail from, strangers liquor up when they meet.'