story with interest. It began well, in a dashing, amusing style, as fresh as Miner’s conversation, but with more in it, and John was beginning to congratulate himself upon having found something to distract his attention from his bodily ills and his mental embarrassments, when the door opened, and Miner himself appeared. “May I come in, Ralston?” he enquired, speaking softly, as though he believed that his friend had a headache. “Oh--hello, Frank! Is that you? Come in! I’m reading your novel. I’d just found it.” Little Frank Miner beamed with pleasure as he saw that the magazine was really open at his own story, for he recognized that this, at least, could not be a case of premeditated appreciation. “Why--Jack--” he stammered a moment later, in evident surprise. “You don’t look badly at all!” “Did they say I was dead?” enquired Ralston, with a grim smile. “Take a cigar. Sit down. Tell me all about my funeral.” Miner laughed as he carefully cut off the end of the cigar and lit it--a sort of continuous little gurgling laugh, like the purling of a brook. “My dear boy,” he said, blowing out a quantity of smoke, and curling himself up in the easy chair, “you’re the special edition of the day. The papers are full of you--they’re selling like hot cakes everywhere--your fight with Tom Shelton, the champion light weight--and your turning up in the arms of two policemen--talk of a ‘jag!’ Lord!” CHAPTER XXVIII. John looked at Miner quietly for a few seconds, without saying anything. The little man was evidently lost in admiration of the magnitude of his friend’s ‘jag,’ as he called it. “I say, Frank,” said Ralston, at last, “it’s all a mistake, you know. It was a series of accidents from beginning to end.” “Oh--yes--I suppose so. You managed to accumulate quite a number of accidents, as you say.” Ralston was silent again. He was well aware of the weight of the evidence against him, and he wished to enter upon his explanation by degrees, in order that it might be quite clear to Miner. “Look here,” he began, after a while. “I’m not the sort of man who tries to wriggle out of things, when he’s done them, am I? Heaven knows--I’ve been in scrapes enough! But you never knew me to deny it, nor to try and make out that I was steady when I wasn’t. Did you, Frank?” “No,” answered Miner, thoughtfully. “I never did. That’s a fact. It’s quite true.” The threefold assent seemed to satisfy Ralston. “All right,” he said. “Now I want you to listen to me, because this is rather an extraordinary tale. I’ll tell it all, as nearly as I can, but there are one or two gaps, and there’s a matter connected with it about which I don’t want to talk to you.” “Go ahead,” answered Miner. “I’ve got some perfectly new faith out--and I’m just waiting for you. Produce the mountain, and I’ll take its measure and remove it at a valuation.”