"Yes," said Verrill, "Great heavens! to think that I should be the last man after all—well, one of us had to be the last. And that’s where the trouble is, Henry. It’s been growing on me for the last two years—ever since Curtice died. He was the twenty-sixth. And he died only a month before the Annual Dinner. Arnold, Brill, Steve—Steve Sharrett, you know, and I—just the four,—were left then; and we sat down to that big table alone; and when we came to the toast of ’The Absent Ones’ ... Well, Henry, we were pretty solemn before we got through. And we knew that the choice of the last man,—who would face those thirty-one empty covers and open the bottle of wine that we all set aside at our first dinner, and drink ’The Absent Ones,’—was narrowing down pretty fine. "Next year there were only Arnold and Steve, and myself left. Brill—well you know all about his death. The three of us got through dinner somehow. The year after that we were still three, and even the year after that. Then poor old Steve went down with the _Dreibund_ in the bay of Biscay, and four months afterward Arnold and I sat down to the table at the Annual, alone. I’m not going to forget that evening in a hurry. Why, Henry—oh! never mind. Then—" "Well," prompted the doctor as his friend paused: "Arnold died three months ago. And the day of our Annual—I mean my—the club’s," Verrill changed his position. "The date of the dinner, the Annual Dinner, is next month, and I’m the only one left." "And, of course, you’ll not go," declared the doctor. "Oh, yes," said Verrill. "Yes, I will go, of course. But—" He shook his head with a long sigh. "When the Last Man Club was organised," he went on, "in ’68, we were all more or less young. It was a great idea, at least I felt that way about it, but I didn’t believe that thirty young men would persist in anything—of that sort very long. But no member of the club died for the first five years, and the club met every year and had its dinner without much thought of—of consequences, and of the inevitable. We met just to be sociable." "Hold on," interrupted the doctor, "you are speaking now of thirty. A while ago you said thirty-one." "Yes, I know," assented Verrill, "There were thirty in the club, but we always placed an extra cover—for—for the Guest of Honour." The doctor made a movement of impatience. Then in a moment, "Well," he said, resignedly, "go on."