Such, however, was not the case, and Dennis was startled presently to see the barman, after filling both glasses with a decoction which caught the light from a dozen merry angles, push one of them in his direction with the companionable suggestion: "Have one with me." Only once before had Dennis indulged in anything of a stimulating nature, and the effect upon his head the next morning had been sufficient to discourage its repetition, and he informed the barman of this disagreeable feature. "Oh!" protested that insinuating Mephisto as he held his glass to the light the better to concentrate its hypnotic gleam and sparkle upon the vacillating youth, "there is no headache in this; this is a man's medicine. Get it down; it will do you good." Persuaded by the example before him, duped by his depressions, and weary of his loneliness, Dennis responded to the dubious suggestion with the guilty haste of one who has decided to let down the moral bars for a short but sufficient interval. Palliated from its original rawness by the additions of the barman, the draught was without special bite or pungency in its passage down his throat, and Dennis was aware of his indiscretion only by an increasing glow in the pit of his stomach and a disposition to credit the barman with a degree of amiability beyond that ordinarily manifested by this functionary. The potation, however, had done its work but partially; there remained the itch of something still to be desired, an elevation yet unattained, and Dennis saw no other way up the sheer height than by an appeal to the barman to duplicate his initial effort. When this had joined its fluent fellows in their several midsts, Dennis was inexperienced enough to accept, as a matter of course, the genial disposition toward the world in general which replaced the depression of the morning. A native eloquence, long disused, began to urge him to a sort of confused improvisation. His data was no longer morose. "Holdin' on cud do annything," he assured the barman. "It isn't a bad wurrld, at all, if wan looks at it through grane glasses. "Shure, I'm in a bit av a hole at prisint, but not too dape to crawl out of." Then after a pause, to enable himself to "shake hands," so to speak, with the suddenly developed genial aspect of affairs, he informed the barman, with the philosophy of his potations, that "A laugh will always mend a kick, providin' th' kick ain't too hard." This pleased the barman, who responded in his characteristic fashion, and Dennis, in acknowledgment, substituted the price of breakfast as fitting return of civilities. However, this was the climax. Dennis could advance no farther. His bibulous friend, with apprehensive disapproval, offered a few diplomatic suggestions involving the retirement of the young man to his room, which the latter accepted with an unbalanced gravity that administered its reproof even through the callous epidermis of the barman.