‘My dear old boy, one hardly expects Alcibiades beyond the Minories. I have been living at that dingy end of town until to come westward is a new sensation. When I saw Trafalgar-square and the lighted windows of yonder Club to-night, I felt like Columbus when he sighted the coast of San Salvador. I had a leisure afternoon, and thought I couldn’t spend it better than in looking you up. And now, Geoff, for your Norwegian and Laplandian experiences. You were looking uncommonly gloomy when I came in; as if your memories of the north were not of the brightest.’ ‘My northern memories are pleasant enough,’ said the other, putting aside the question lightly, just in that old familiar way Lucius knew so well. ‘Come, Lucius, plant yourself there,’ rolling over another capacious chair, the last device of some satanic upholsterer for the propagation of slothful habits; ‘take one of those Havanas, and light up. I can never talk freely to a man till I can hardly see his face across the clouds of his tobacco—a native modesty of disposition, I suppose; or perhaps that disinclination to look my fellow-man straight in the face which is accounted one of the marks of a villanous character. Goodish weed, isn’t it? Do you remember British Columbia, Davoren, and the long days and nights when there was no tobacco?’ ‘Do I remember?’ echoed the surgeon, looking at the fire. ‘Am I ever likely to forget?’ ‘Of course not. The question was a mere _façon de parler_. There are things that no man can forget. Can I forget, for instance, how you saved my life? how through all those wearisome nights and days when I was lying rolled up in my buffalo skins raving like a lunatic, fancying myself in all sorts of places and among all sorts of people, you were at once doctor and sick-nurse, guardian and provider?’ ‘Please don’t talk of that time, Geoff. There are some things better forgotten. I did no more for you than I’d have done for a stranger; except that my heart went with my service, and would have almost broken if you had died. Our sufferings and our peril at that time seem to me too bitter even for remembrance. I can’t endure to look back at them.’