"No, I'm going to the Bend. There is no need for you to drive me," I added as I took the reins up. I could have sworn the old sinner looked relieved as he went back to the coach-house. When I reached the bungalow I found Lessing himself on the porch. As he rose to greet me I saw that he was taller than I had thought; there was a certain wiry strength about him when he stood upright. What amazed me was the man's extraordinary endurance and resiliency; his face showed scarcely a sign of the exhaustion of yesterday. He was dressed in corduroy trousers and a soft silk shirt, under which the outline of the bandaging was visible as he moved. "Well, how are you?" I asked as we shook hands. "All right. Come into the house--or shall we stay here?" "I'll have a look at you first." I followed him into the room. "A bit stiff?" "Nothing much." "Sleep?" "Like a log." I need hardly have asked him. He stripped up his shirt and I made a brief readjustment of the dressings. The wounds were going on all right. He must have had a magnificent constitution despite his slightness of build. We sat down on the divan, and Lessing produced a box of cigarettes. There was a small wooden table near the window, littered with test-tubes and odds and ends, and I nodded toward it. "Been busy?" "I was just working out something. I have a sort of laboratory fitted outside, though. I had it built." "That sort of studio place?" "It's just like a workshop--where I muddle occasionally! I'll show you sometime, if you like." "I should be delighted." "My experiments have, unfortunately, given rather a bad name to the place. They had a bad effect on old Lennox, too. I believe I was too progressive for him. You wouldn't expect that from a medical man, would you? Did you know Lennox very well?" He knocked the ash off his cigarette, waiting for my reply. If he was guarded, so was I. "I knew him at the University, a good while ago. Since then I had not seen him till the other day." "He's a queer old bird! I used to tell him he made the ideal country practitioner. It made him mad because it was so exactly true. We used to disagree frightfully, you know. It's the only relaxation in a place like this. I shall miss Lennox...." It struck me he was trying, in a casual way, to find out how far Lennox had spoken of him to me, and whether we had been at any time since his departure in correspondence. "Lennox has quaint theories," he went on, leaning back against the cushions. "One of them is that nothing exists outside the pharmacopœia and Burton's 'North American Fauna.' We used to argue it at great length. I don't believe he's convinced yet." "He was never an easy man to convince." "So? It's habit that survives. How do you like it down here, by the way?" "Oh, I'm putting in a good time," I smiled. "I fish a little, tramp a little. There ought to be good shooting in these woods by and by." "They are interesting," said Lessing drily.