“Ah, not like me,” said the other, turning round in his seat, so that his words should reach only Joyce’s ear. “Until three weeks ago I had a wife and child. No man ever loved as I did. I worked for them till my brain almost gave way--fifteen hours a day, week after week, starved myself for them, denied myself the clothes on my back. Now I have them no longer. Life is valueless to me.” “Are they--dead?” asked Joyce. “No. Gone off with the lodger on the first floor,” replied Noakes, solemnly. Joyce remained silent. What could he say? He looked sympathetic. Noakes blew his nose in a dirty piece of calico with frayed edges that courtesy called a pocket-handkerchief, and continued:-- “So my life is wrecked. My imagination is darkened and I can write no more. I have given up my literary ambitions. It is not worth while writing penny bloods at half a crown a thousand for one’s own support.” “What are you going to do then?” asked Joyce, interested in the quaint creature. “I am going abroad. I have come here perhaps for the last time. On the day after to-morrow I sail for South Africa.” Was it a sudden inspiration? Was it the coming to a head of vague resolutions, despairs, workings, the final word of a destiny driving him from England? Was it a sudden sense of protecting brotherhood towards this forlorn, tragic scarecrow of a man? Joyce never knew. Possibly it was all bursting upon his soul at once. Springing to his feet, he held out his hand to Noakes. “By all that’s holy, I ’ll come with you!” he cried, in a strange voice. The other, after some hesitation, took his hand and looked at him pathetically. “Are you in earnest?” “In dead earnest.” “I am going in the very cheapest possible manner.” “So am I.” “I am going, with a few pounds I have scraped together, to try my luck.” “The same with me. It can’t be worse than England; starvation is certain here. Come, say, honour bright--will you be glad of me as a companion--as a friend if you like? I am a lonely bit of driftwood like yourself.” Then Noakes rose to his feet and this time squeezed Joyce’s hand and his pale eyes glistened. “I ’ll swear to be your friend in peace and in danger,” he said, in his quaint phraseology. “And I thank the God of all mercies for sending you to me in my hour of need.” “All right,” said Joyce. “And now let us have some whisky, and talk over details.” And so, in that dingy billiard-room, unknown to the moulting Bohemians huddled up in somnolent attitudes close by on the divan and unheeded by the shirt-sleeved men passing around the table intent on their game, was struck the strangest bargain of a friendship ever made between two outcast men; a friendship that was to last through want and sickness and despair and hope, and to leave behind it the ineffaceable stamp of nobler feeling.