“It is eleven months since I smoked a good cigar, Baird; perhaps you can guess how this one tastes to me,” said Loring softly, almost as if talking to himself. Then he relapsed again into silence. Radlett puffed vigorously on his cigar, then said: “Steve, it is your own fault that you are not smoking good cigars all the time.” “Perhaps it is,” answered Loring; “but the fact remains, and eleven months is a long time out of one’s life to lose such happiness.” “The last time that I heard of you, you were in Chicago,” remarked Radlett. “Some one told me that you had a good position there. What happened to you?” “Fired,” was the laconic answer. “Did you deserve to be?” “Yes.” One of the things that Loring’s friends held dearest in him was the fact that he never shirked the truth in the matter of his delinquencies. His own word on the matter was final. In the old days Loring’s deficiencies had been among his most charming attributes. People had always spoken hopefully of “When he buckles down.” Now the “When he will,” had become “Now that he has not,” and his deficiencies were not so charming. Radlett smoked on imperturbably. When he again spoke, his voice was thick with smoke. “What was your last position?” “Hoist engineer, Quentin Mining Company.” Again the query: “Why did you leave?” “Fired,” repeated Stephen, flushing savagely. Then looking Radlett in the eyes, he added: “I was drunk, and through my fault two men were killed.” Leaning forward, Radlett laid his hand on Loring’s shoulder, and gripped it tightly with his strong fingers. “Steve, old man, I am sorry for you. I know what this must mean to you. You were always the most kind-hearted fellow on earth, and I can see how this has crushed and saddened you. I’m—I’m damned sorry—but, Steve, you needed it. It will be the making of you, Steve. We have all been wanting to help you, and we could not; you would not let us. You have lost almost everything in the world,—your money, your position, your family. You have lost prize after prize which you might have won; and all these things have not held you. You still had that quality of drifting. You used to think,—I remember well how we used to talk it over,—that love would hold a man. It won’t. If you have tried it, you know”—Loring breathed hard—“if you have not, then you have been spared one more blow. You never had, or could have had, religion; I don’t know what that might have done for you.” Radlett was speaking fast now, and though he struck hard, Loring never flinched. “You always knew that you were hurting yourself by what you did; but that did not check you,” went on Radlett. “You had, I remember, a creed of ethics in which, so you said, you logically believed. You know how much good that has done you.