"Jack's my best friend, of course," I answered after a moment. "You don't tell me--" and here I broke off, for he was eyeing me queerly. "The Professor is, or was, a pretty good friend of mine," said he. "But you hesitated a moment. Why? . . . Oh, you needn't answer: I'll tell you. When I asked, 'Are you so fond of him?' for a moment--just for a flash--you hadn't Jack Foe in your mind, but Farrell." "Well, that's true," I owned. "I'm pretty angry with Jack: he's playing it outside the touch-line, in my opinion. Except that I detest cruelty, Farrell's nothing to me, of course." "I wonder," Jimmy mused. "Sometimes, when I'm thinking over this affair--but let us confine ourselves to the Professor. He's in some danger, if you think _that_ worth the journey. They shoot pretty quick in the States, and they don't value human life a bit as we value it in England: or so I've always heard. If it's true--and it would be rather interesting to run across and find this out for oneself--one of these days Farrell will be pushed outside _his_ touch-line--outside the British conventions in which he lives and moves and has his poor being--and a second later the Professor will get six pellets of lead pumped into him." "Oh, as for that," said I, "Jack must look after himself, as he's well able to. When a man takes to head-hunting, it's no job for his friends to save him risks." "Glad you look at it so," said Jimmy. "Then, so far as the Professor's concerned, it's from himself we're not protecting him, just now?" "Or from the self which is not himself," I suggested. "That's better," Jimmy agreed, and again fell a-musing. "Sometimes I think we might get closer to it yet". . . But he did not supply the definition. After half-a-minute's brooding he woke up, as it were, with a start. "Could you sail this next week?" he asked.