“All right, Slim, I’ll stop. I don’t need to go on. All I want to say is that you don’t know—you couldn’t know—the fancy I’ve took to you—and I used to think that you kind o’ ’ad a fancy for me, like.” “So I have.” The mild eyes searched me. There was a violent trembling of the lower lip. “Do you mean that, Slim?” Before I could answer he added, proudly: “I don’t need to ’ave no one sayin’ they’ve got a fancy for me when they ’aven’t.” “Oh, but it’s true!” Two shivering hands were stretched out toward me in dramatic appeal. “Oh, then leave that there drink alone and come ’ome along o’ me.” His eyes fell on the glass. “’Ow many o’ them things ’ave ye ’ad?” “None yet; this is the first; and I haven’t tasted it.” He straightened himself up, speaking with what I can only call a kind of exaltation. “Then God A’mighty has sent me to you in time. It’s Him—and except Him ’tain’t no one nor nothink. Slim, if you puts yer lips to that glass now ye’ll be sinnin’ in His face just as much as if it was Him and not me as was a-pleadin’ with ye.” “It isn’t a sin to take a cocktail.” “Not for every one, I don’t suppose. It wouldn’t be for the doctor; and it wouldn’t be for Mr. Coningsby; but ’tis for me, and ’tis for you. There’s take-it-and-leave-it people in the world, and there’s take-it-and-be-damned; and you and me belongs to the last. Oh, Slim, don’t be mad wi’ me! Ain’t ye a silver-star man in the Down and Out? Ain’t I yer next friend—yer real next friend, that is—a great deal more than that young Pyn, with ’is impotent tongue, what stood up with you? Come ’ome along o’ me, and I’ll show you somethin’ good.” It was the dark hint again. “What are you driving at, Lovey? What is there at home?” His reply might have been paraphrased from a writing he had never heard of. “There’s things ahead of you, Slim, different from what you’re expectin’ of. Wait.” I confess to being startled. You must see me as in an overwrought condition, reacting from the tremendous strain, first of fighting, then of blindness, and thirdly of emotional stress. I do not pretend that more than any other man who comes back from the jaws of the infernal brazier in Flanders I was my normal self. I was easily up and easily down, easily excited and easily impressed. The mere cast of Lovey’s two brief sentences impressed me. “What things?” I asked, with that mixture of credulity and rejection with which one puts questions to a trance medium. “I’ll not tell ye; I’ll show ye; only ye must come ’ome.” As if in illustration of his words, he added, “Ye must begin to wait right now.” “But why wait?”