Tor smiled. He could not be angry with Phil—with the man who would always be a boy to him, whose oracle and king he had ever been, and whose allegiance could never be seriously shaken. ‘You deserve a thorough good licking for being such a confounded muff; but you never do get your deserts in the way of chastisement. Phil, I have answered, and would answer, for your trust in me with my life; and _you_ could believe this of me—you, my chosen companion and comrade—mine own familiar friend.’ ‘I have been punished,’ said Phil slowly. ‘I have not distrusted you without more pain than you can easily imagine. Can you forgive it and forget it?’ ‘To be sure. We will only think of the comic side of the question, for it is infinitely comic. After all, you had cause for bewilderment—only you might have trusted me. Come, Phil, tell me your tale. I can’t still understand how you escaped without my hearing of it.’ So Phil told, graphically enough, the story of his awakening. ‘The little wretch—so he played me false!’ cried Tor, as Dr. Schneeberger’s share in the conspiracy became known. ‘I’d have sworn he was too deeply buried in the human brain to have risen to any kind of conspiracy. Why couldn’t he have kept his word to me? I should like to punch his head so well, that his own brain should become an object of immediate solicitude.’ ‘Don’t abuse him too much,’ said Phil. ‘He was loyal to you until I painted you so black that he couldn’t well trust in you. When he was won over, he made a famous ally. It was he who devised the fiction of the sea-voyage, so as to account for my absence from his roof, should you chance to come over.’ Tor’s eyes opened wide. ‘Phil, you villain!’ he said slowly, ‘you don’t mean to say you had come to your senses that last time I saw you in Germany?’ Phil looked at him, smiling deprecatingly. ‘Well, that beats all! What a confounded ass you were not to have it out, then and there!’ ‘I would have done so, if you had only called me “Phil.” Why did _you_ keep up the fiction, Tor?’ ‘I—I like that! As if I could possibly be two people at once, or betray myself to anyone! As if I wasn’t playing a risky enough game as it was, for the sake of your interests, without being expected to let others see what I was at. _I was_ Phil Debenham when I went to Germany. You were Tor. A nice thing it would have been if I had gone and reversed positions!’ ‘But why were you Phil, and why was I Tor? and why were you so bold and defiant when I—Signor Pagliadini—told you that you were Torwood? It was enough to make anybody believe you meant to hold what you had got. Miss Marjory Descartes as good as told me that you would fight to the death.’