"I'd do what I said I should,--change places with you; only I suppose that wouldn't be possible. Failing that"--He pondered over it for a moment, balancing his fork on the edge of his plate the while. "A few weeks ago I should have mapped out a future worth talking about. I had a lucid day, in which the things that make for ambition of the better sort had their inning. If you had asked me such a question then, I should doubtless have told you that I should try to realize the ideals of other days; to walk uprightly, and to hold great wealth as it should be held--in trust for the good of one's kind; to win the love of the ideal woman, perhaps; and, having won it, to sit at her feet until I had learned how to be God's almoner." Lansdale's smile was not wholly cynical. "But now?" he queried. "But now I know my own limitations. I think I should go back to the old farm in the Berkshire Hills, and try to make it earn me bread and meat." "But you couldn't spend ten thousand a month on an abandoned farm, though I grant you it would be a pretty expensive luxury. What would you do with the lave of it?" Jeffard's lips tightened, and his face was not pleasant to look upon. "I'd let it go on accumulating, piling up and up till there was no shadow of possibility that I should ever again come to know what it means to be without money. And even then I should know I could never get enough," he added. This time Lansdale's smile was of incredulity. "Let me prophesy," he suggested. "When your lucky day overtakes you, you will do none of these things. Jeffard the fool may be heard of wherever the Associated Press has a wire or a correspondent; but Jeffard the miser will never exist outside of your own unbalanced imagination. Let's go out and walk. It's fervidly close in here." Arm in arm they paced the streets until nearly midnight, talking of things practical and impracticable, and keeping well out of the present in either the past or the future. When Lansdale said good-night, he stuffed a bank-note into Jeffard's pocket. "It's only a loan," he protested, when Jeffard would have made him take it back. "And there are no conditions. You can go and play with it, if that's what you'd rather do." The suggestion was unfortunate, though possibly the result would have been the same in any event. Five minutes after parting from Lansdale, Jeffard had taken his place in the silent group around the table in the upper room; and by the time the pile of counters under his hand had increased to double the amount of Lansdale's gift, he was oblivious to everything save the one potent fact--that after so many reverses his luck had turned at last.