“Well,” he cried, “it’s a small matter for me, and, after all, you don’t know what you miss. You don’t keep whisky here, I suppose?” “No, we don’t drink grog, either of us.” “So I should have thought. Then I’ll make for livelier quarters”--and crying good-night to us, he went singing out of the room. The moment I heard the outer door shut on him, I turned to Duke. “Don’t hold me responsible for him,” I said. “You see what he is.” “Renny,” said Duke, gravely, “I see that friendship is impossible to him, and can understand in a measure what he made you suffer.” “Yet, I think, it’s true that he’s of the sort whom fortune always favors.” “They sign a compact in blood for it, though, as the wicked baron does in the story books.” He smiled and we both fell silent. Presently Duke said from the darkness: “Where has he put up in London?” “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. I’m not particularly anxious to find out as long as he keeps away from here.” “Ah, as long as he does,” said my companion, and sunk into a pondering fit again. “Get off early to-morrow,” he said, suddenly. “What time have you arranged to--to meet Dolly?” “Half-past nine, Duke.” “Not before? Well, be punctual, there’s a good fellow. She’s worth an effort.” I watched him, as he rose with a stifled sigh and busied himself over lighting our bedroom candle. In the gusty dance of the flame his eyes seemed to change and glint red like beads of garnet. I had no notion why, but a thrill ran through me and with it a sudden impulse to seize him by the hand and exclaim: “Thank God, we’re friends, Duke!” He startled a little and looked full in my face, and then I knew what had moved me. Friends were we; but heaven pity the man who made him his enemy! CHAPTER XXII. THE SHADOW OF THE STORM. Dolly met me the next morning, looking shy and half-frightened as a child caught fruit-picking. She gave me her hand with no show of heartiness, and withdrew it at once as if its fingers were the delicate antennae of her innocent soul and I her natural enemy. “Where shall we go, Renny?” she asked, glancing timidly up at me. “To Epping again, Dolly, dear. I’ve set my heart on it.” She seemed at first as if about to ask me why; then to shrink from a subject she dreaded appearing to have a leading interest in. “Very well,” she answered, faintly. “It will be lovely there now.” “Won’t you help a poor woman to a crust of bread, kind lidy?” said a voluble whining voice at our ears, and a sturdy mendicant thrust her hand between us. She was a very frouzy and forbidding-looking mendicant, indeed, with battered bonnet askew and villainous small eyes, and her neighborhood was redolent of gin.