"'Oh, a thought-reading _seance_. Right.' He turned the chair about, sat on it straddle-wise and crossed his arms over the curved top bar. 'Let me see,' he mused, leaning forward, pulling at his cigar and bringing his eyes, after they had travelled over the crowd, back firmly to us. ''Two souls with but a single thought,'' he quoted, ''two hearts that beat as one.' . . . Well, now, if you were of my country and from my parts I'd string you like two jays on one perch--How say'st, prithee, and in sooth yes, sure! I'd sing you _The Cowpuncher's Lament_, sweet and low, with tears in my voice. As it is, I'll be getting the local colour a bit smudged, maybe: but I guess-- I guess,' said Caffyn--and his gaze seemed to turn inward and become far withdrawn--'I guess--'O Hardy, kiss me ere I die!'-- No, that's wrong: it isn't the cockpit of the _Victory_. It's the after-saloon of the Calais-Dover packet--shortest route--and I see you two there at table, eating cold roast beef, underdone, with plain boiled potatoes. With plain boiled potatoes--yes, and mixed pickles.' He passed a hand over his eyes. 'Excuse me, gentlemen; the vision is blurred just here-- if someone would kindly shoot that lady on the stage and stop her--it's not much to ask, when she's exposing so much of her personality--How the devil can I tell the difference between mixed pickles and piccalilli while she's committing murder on the high C? _Passez outre_. . . . I see you eating like men who haven't seen Christian food for years; yet you are swallowing it in a hurry that almost defeats the blessed taste; because one of you has just shouted up, with his mouth full, a command to be informed as soon as ever the white shore of Albion can be spied from deck. It is a race with Time--Shakespeare's Cliff against a pickled onion. . . . Oh, have done! have done!' "'Thank you, Caffyn,' said I. 'You may come out of your trance. You have done admirably.' "'Wonderful,' breathed Farrell; and he breathed it heavily. 'I won't say I'd actually arrived at a plain-boiled potato--' "'But it was floating in your brain,' I chimed him down. 'Such is the province of imaginative art, of poetry, as defined by that great Englishman, Samuel Johnson. It reproduces our common thoughts with a great increase of sensibility.' "'Mr. Caffyn has put it rightways, anyhow,' Farrell insisted. 'Look here, Doctor'--he calls me by that title and none other-- 'What's the programme for to-morrow.' "'Versailles,' said I. "'Then we'll make it so. But, the day after, I'm for England. . . . I don't mind telling you, Mr. Caffyn, that the Doctor and me hit it off first-class.' "'I've noted it,' said Caffyn quietly.