He wriggled to the edge of the sofa, and made another unsuccessful stretch for the matchbox, but those baffling two inches refused to be mastered. Pat looked around in a desperate search for help, seized a biscuit, and aimed it carefully for the farther edge of the box, which, hit at the right angle, might perhaps have been twitched nearer to the sofa, but though Pat had considerable skill in the art of throwing, he had no luck this afternoon. Biscuit after biscuit was hurled with increasing violence, as temper suffered from the strain of failure, and each time the matchbox jumped still farther _away_, while another shower of biscuit crumbs bespattered the carpet. Then at last when the plate was emptied, and the last hope gone, deliverance came at the sound of the opening of the front door, and a quick, well-known whistle. Glynn! No one else knew the secret of the hidden key. Pat halloed loudly in response, and the next moment Stephen stood in the doorway, looking with bewildered eyes at the bespattered carpet. "What's this? Playing Aunt Sally? Rather a wanton waste of biscuits, isn't it?" "Try 'em, and see! Soft as dough. Give me that matchbox, Glynn, like a good soul. It fell off my chair, and I've been lying here pining for a smoke, and making pot shots of it, till I felt half mad.--If you only knew--" Stephen Glynn _did_ know. It was that knowledge which brought him regularly day by day to the little flat at the top of eighty odd stairs. He walked across the room, his limp decidedly less in evidence through the passage of the years, reclaimed the matchbox, and seated himself on the edge of the couch. "Light up, old fellow! It will do you good." Pat struck the match and sucked luxuriously. There was no need to make conversation to Glynn. He was a comfortable fellow who always understood. It was good to see him sitting there, to look at his fine, grave face, and realise that boredom was over, and the happiest hour of the day begun. "I say, Glynn, I _made_ you, come! Mesmerised you. It drives a fellow crazy to be done by a couple of inches. They say if you concentrate your thoughts--" "I arranged this morning to call at five o'clock. I should say by the look of things you had concentrated on biscuits. ... Where's that old woman?" Glynn inquired. "Shopping. Always is. And never buys anything by the taste of the food. You should have seen my lunch! I'll be a living skeleton at this rate." Pat spoke laughingly, but the hearer frowned, and looked quickly at the sharpened face, on which weeks of solitary confinement had left their mark. "Why don't you round into her?" "Daren't! Might make off and leave me in the lurch. They do, you know. Fellows have told me. Any one is better than no one at all when you are minus a leg." "And about that letter? The time limit runs out to-morrow. You know what I threatened?" Pat shrugged impatiently.