What was he like? With the flush on his cheeks the laughter in his eyes he might have been an enormous schoolboy home for the holidays, and genially impudent on the strength of it. "Fact is," he went on, "you didn't expect to find such a high personage in a third-class compartment. That put you off." "Yes, I suppose it was that." It did seem absurd that a pork-packing prince, who could probably have bought up the entire rolling stock of the London and North-western, should be traveling third. "You see, I never used to go anything but third on this old line or any other. I'm only doing it now to make sure I'm coming home. I _know_ I'm coming home, but I want the feel of it." He folded the _Chicago Advertiser_ and packed it carefully in his portmanteau. "I'm keeping this to show my people," he explained. "It's the sort of thing that used to make my young sister grin." "You have--er--a young sister?" "I had two--fifteen years ago." The clergyman again looked sorry he had spoken. "All right--this time. They're not dead. Only one of them isn't quite so young as she used to be. The best of it is, it's a surprise visit I'm paying them. They none of them know I'm coming. I simply said I might be turning up one of these days--before very long." "They won't be sorry to have you back again, I imagine." "Sorry?" He smiled sweetly and was silent for some minutes, evidently picturing the joy, the ecstasy, of that return. Then, feeling no doubt that the ice was broken, he launched out into continuous narrative. "Going out's all very well," he said, "but it isn't a patch on coming home. Not but what you can overdo the thing. I knew a man who was always coming home--seemed as if he couldn't stop away. I don't know that _his_ people were particularly glad to see him." "How was that?" "A bit tired of it, I suppose. You see, they'd given him about nine distinct starts in life. They were always shipping him off to foreign parts, with his passage paid and a nice little bit of capital waiting for him on the other side. And, if you'll believe me, every blessed time he turned up again, if not by the next steamer, by the next after that." "What became of the capital?" "Oh, _that_ he liquidated. Drank it--see? We've all got our own particular little foibles, and my friend's was drink." "I don't wish to appear prejudiced, but I think I should be inclined myself to call it a sin." "You may _call_ it a sin. It was the only one he'd got, of any considerable size. I suppose you'd distinguish between a sin and its consequences?" "Most certainly," replied the clergyman unguardedly. "Well. Then--there were the women----" "Steady, my friend, that makes two sins." "No. You can't count it as two. You see, he never spoke to a girl till he was so blind drunk he couldn't tell whether she was pretty or ugly. Women were a consequence." "That only made his sin the greater, sir."