The Saturday evening after my talk with Annette was a special one. After the actor, the journalist, Headlights, and Daisy had renewed their pledge for a week, Lovey and I stood up with the Scotchman, the piano-mover, and three or four others, and repeated ours for a month. It probably seems a simple thing to you; but for us who knew what had been our perils during the preceding month and the months preceding that, it was a solemn undertaking. The first vow of all had been relatively easy, since new resolutions have an attraction in themselves. The weekly vows that came afterward were not so fiercely hard, because they were but weekly. When it came to promising for a month—well, I can only say that to us a month had the length which it has to a child. It seemed to stretch on indefinitely ahead of one. The foe, retreating as we pressed forward, was always keeping up a rear-guard fight, and we never woke in the morning without being aware that we might strike an ambush before nightfall. We got so tired of the struggle that we often thought of the relief it would be to be captured; and many a time the resolution was made that when this month was up.... And just at these minutes the chaps who seemed stronger would close in about us, or those who seemed weaker would make some appeal, and when the critical Saturday evening came round we would walk up again, impelled by forces beyond our control, and repledge ourselves. On such occasions there was always some word spoken to us by men who had fought longer than we had and seen the enemy routed more effectively. That night the speaker to the blue-star men was that club benefactor and favorite, Beady Lamont. He was a huge mass of muscle, turning the scale at three hundred and more. Strength was in every movement when he walked and every pose when he stood still. To my architect’s eye he planted his legs as though they were ancient Egyptian monoliths. Comparatively small round the abdomen, his chest was like a great drum. His arms—but why give a description? Hercules must have been like him, and Goliath of Gath, and Charlemagne, and the Giants that were in Those Days. They said that in drink he used to be terrible; but now his big, jolly face was all a quiver of good-will. His voice was one of those husky chuckles of which the very gurgles make you laugh. To make you laugh was his principle function in the club. On this evening he began his talk with a string of those amusing, disconnected anecdotes which used to be a feature of after-dinner speeches, somewhat as a boy will splash about in the water before he begins to swim. But when he swam it was with vigor.