He lit the cigar, then, and once more sat himself down upon the edge of the bed. He puffed away steadily. His head was bent forward and his hands dangled between his knees in such ease as the snugness of the bracelets and the shortness of the chain permitted. Looking in at him you would have said he was planning something; that he was considering various problems. He was still there in that same hunching position, but the cigar had burned down two-thirds of its length, when the lock snicked a warning and his companion re-entered, bearing a key with which he relocked the door upon the inner side. "Well," said the newcomer, "we're on our way." There was no reply to this. He took off his derby hat and tossed it aside, and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. "Making yourself comfortable, eh?" he went on as though trying to manufacture conversation. The manacled one didn't respond. He merely canted his head, the better to look into the face of his travel mate. "Say, look here," demanded the new arrival, his tone and manner changing. "What's the use, your nursing that grouch?" Coming up the gangway, twenty minutes before, they might have passed, at a casual glance, for brothers. Viewed now as they faced each other in the quiet of this small room such a mistake could not have been possible. They did not suggest brothers; for all that they were much the same in build and colouring they did not even suggest distant cousins. About the sitting man there were abundant evidences of a higher and more cultured organism than the other possessed; the difference showed in costume, in manner, in speech. Even wearing handcuffs he displayed, without trying to do so, a certain superiority in poise and assurance. In a way his companion seemed vaguely aware of this. It seemed to make him--what shall I say?--uneasy; maybe a bit envious; possibly arousing in him the imitative instinct. Judging of him by his present aspect and the intonations of his voice, a shrewd observer of men and motives might have said that he was amply satisfied with the progress of the undertaking which he had now in hand, but that he lately had ceased to be entirely satisfied with himself. "Say, Bronston," he repeated, "I tell you there's no good nursing the grouch. I haven't done anything all through this matter except what I thought was necessary. I've acted that way from the beginning, ain't I?" "Have you heard me complain?" parried the gyved man. He blew out a mouthful of smoke. "No, I haven't, not since you made the first kick that day I found you out in Denver. But a fellow can't very well travel twenty-five hundred miles with another fellow, sharing the same stateroom with him and all that, without guessing what's in the other fellow's mind." There was another little pause. "Well," said the man upon the bed, "we've got this far. What's the programme from this point on regarding these decorations?" He raised his hands to indicate what he meant.