When Gurth, feeling restless and not knowing what to do, at last made up his mind to travel about the world, revisiting town only at long intervals, he again came to Birnie, as his best friend, and talked matters over with him. Birnie suggested that someone in whom he had perfect confidence should be left executor; and what was more natural than that Gurth should immediately appoint him? In whose hands could his affairs be so safe? Thus Birnie was duly left executor, and Grigg and Limpet were appointed his solicitors, in order to relieve the doctor of any responsibility. Birnie had never asked for this arrangement, therefore he could accept it with a good grace. Birnie was a man who never asked for what he wanted. But somehow or other he generally got it. When, after his supposed death at sea, Gurth turned up again in the flesh, Birnie gave him a hearty welcome, and they renewed their old friendship. From the first moment the Turvey ghost-story came to his ears, the doctor formed a decided opinion that Egerton was among the saved and keeping out of the way for some reason of his own. But he kept his opinion to himself, and professed to be as astonished as anyone when the ghost turned out to be real flesh and blood. Birnie was doing very well, with his house rent free, his annuity, and a steadily improving practice, and he was quite content that Gurth should keep him out of his executorship for a good many years yet. A vulgar-minded person might have suggested that Gurth alive was, perhaps, worth quite as much to the doctor as Gurth dead. The doctor would have repelled the idea with virtuous indignation. All he got from Gurth was given freely and unsolicited. The Birnie conscience was as clear as crystal in that particular. The resurrection of Egerton did not, as I have said, disturb the doctor’s equanimity an atom, but the resurrection of another of his old comrades did. Birnie would as soon have met the devil as Edward Marston. Gurth was rich and useful. There the spirit of _camaraderie_, was strong in the Birnian soul. But Marston was poor and detrimental; under such circumstanccs old friendship was a thing Dr. Birnie would prefer to forget. Marston, however, was not the man to allow himself to be forgotten. Needing an old friend when his fortune was at a low ebb, he turned to the one Providence flung in his way and made use of him. He was moderate—far more moderate than Birnie had expected. He took £500, certainly, but he came for no more. All the favours he asked from the doctor after that were quite remote from financial ones. Birnie hated Marston, because he felt he was dangerous. He was a link with a time Birnie would much rather forget. Further, Marston was unscrupulous, and he never knew to what extent he might not trade on the secrets of the past.