A year after Laidley's death, Judge Rhodes, being in New York, breakfasted with Mr. Neckart. He noticed that the editor had grown lean and sallow. "And God knows he had no good looks to spare," smoothing down his own white beard over his comfortable paunch. Something, too, of that easy frankness which had made Neckart so popular was gone; no topic interested him; his eye was secretive and irritable; he spoke and moved under the constant pressure of self-control. The judge, as he watered his claret, eyed the dark face opposite to him critically. "Now, I never," he thought, "saw a sign of ill-temper or cruelty in that man. Yet I have a queer fancy that if the reins were once taken off he could not master himself again. It must be devilishly uncomfortable, holding one's self in in that way," the last morsel of quail sliding down his throat unctuously. "_I_ can let myself out without danger." "Why, you eat nothing! The campaign's been too much for you, Mr. Neckart," he said aloud. "You've run down terribly in the last year. Always the way. You young men make too many spurts in the first heat, and break down before the middle of the race. Well, that's our American policy. But the American physique won't stand it." "Do you only mean that I have broken down physically, or do you see any change in my work? The leading articles are mine, you know. Don't be afraid to be frank." "Well, now that you ask me--Your articles are more forcible lately, more popular: they bring down the galleries, eh? But it's a sledge-hammer force, it's vehemence, d'ye see? There's a lack of that moderation, that repressed power, in which was your real strength. You asked me to be frank?" "Yes. And I knew just what you would say. Well, what must be, is!" with a gesture which dismissed the subject. "Nonsense! It's your nervous system that needs toning, that's all. If our side goes in, get a foreign mission--some warm, lazy place on the Mediterranean, say. Rest a few years, and when you come home take an easier pace for the rest of your life. Lord bless you, boy! I've been through it all. When I was a young fellow--mere bundle of nerves, high-strung, sir--high-strung! Ambition, love! Constitution wouldn't stand it!--Bit of the steak, John, rare.--Joe Rhodes, I said, either come down to the jog-trot level or die. So here I am! Good for forty years yet, please God! When you are my age you may be just what I am, if you choose." Neckart's eye twinkled: "Try the birds, judge." He made an effort after that to resume his old careless manner, and the judge had tact enough to drop the subject. But he was not deceived. "There's more here than meets the eye," he said shrewdly to himself. "Neckart has had a blow that has made him stagger. He has worked like a horse in a treadmill. But he has the constitution to stand it. Functions in healthy condition--tremendous vital power. Either hereditary disease is at work, or some morbid passion, or he would not have given way."