It was after dinner on Welkie's veranda. The two friends had been smoking for some time in silence. Young Greg had just left with his aunt to go to bed. Balfe was thinking what a pity it was the boy's mother had not lived to see him now. He turned in his chair. "What would you do without him, Greg?" Welkie understood what his friend had in mind. "It would be like the days having no sunrise. I'd be groping in the dark, and almost no reason for me to keep on groping. Splashed in concrete and slaked in lime, from head to toe, steaming under that eternal sun, five hundred spiggities and not half enough foremen to keep 'em jumping, I find myself saying to myself, 'What in God's name is the use?' and then I'll see a picture of his shining face running to meet me on the beach, and, Andie, it's like the trade-wind setting in afresh. The men look around to see what I'm whistling about. But"--Welkie sniffed and stood up--"get it?" Balfe caught a faint breath, the faintest tang borne upon the wings of the gentlest of breezes. Welkie went inside. Presently he returned with bottles and glasses. "When a little breeze stirs, as it sometimes does of a hot night here, and there's beer in the ice-box and the ice not all melted, life's 'most worth living. Try some, Andie--from God's country. And one of these Porto Ric' cigars. Everybody'll be smoking 'em soon, and then we poor chaps'll have to be paying New York prices for 'em, which means we'll have to make a new discovery somewhere." "Wait, Greg--I almost forgot." Balfe stepped to his suit-case, took out a box of cigars, and handed it to Welkie. "From Key West. Hernando Cabada. When I told him I was going to see you, he sat down and rolled out that boxful, which took him three hours, and gave them to me for you. 'For my friend, Mis-ter Wel-keey-ay,' he said." "Good old Hernando!" Welkie opened the box. Balfe took one, Welkie took one; they lit up. "Ah-h--" Welkie woofed a great gob of smoke toward the veranda roof. "Andie, you won't have to make any chemical analysis of the ashes of these cigars to prove they're good. There is an artist--Hernando--and more! I used to drop in to see him after a hot day. He would let me roll out a cigar for myself in one of his precious moulds, and we'd sit and talk of a heap of things. 'Some day, Hernando,' I'd say, 'along will come some people and offer you such a price for your name that I reckon you won't be able to resist.' 'No, no, my friend,' he would say. 'For my nam' there shall be only my cigar. I shall mak' the good, fine cigar--until I shall die. And for the sam'--one pr-r-ice.' How'd you come to run into him, Andie?" "I'd heard about him and you. I suspected, too, that he could verify a few things about the Construction Company." "And did he?" "He did. And so they have been after you again?" Welkie nodded. "And offering more money than ever?" Welkie nodded.