Waring looked at him curiously.

"What a wonderful man!" he half murmured. "I was led to you by fate: you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you--and now..."

"Let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman, practically. "I have a ranch out West. A good piece of property.

It's in the hands of a clever Englishman and promises well. How would you like to go out there and start anew? He'll give you a welcome, and he's a first-rate business man. Will you go?"

Waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets. He stood well on his feet. Bulstrode remarked it. He looked meditatively down between the soles of his shoes.

"You mean to say you give me a chance--to--to----"

"Begin anew, Waring."

"I drink a great deal," said the young man.

"You will swear off."

"I've gambled away all the money I ever had."

"You will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor."

"I'm under a cloud----

"Not in my eyes," said Bulstrode, stoutly.

"--which I can never clear."

Bulstrode made a dismissing gesture.

"I should want the chap out there to know the truth."

"The truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted:

"To know under what circ.u.mstances I left my people."

"No, that is unnecessary," said Bulstrode, firmly. "n.o.body has any right to your past. I don't know his. That's the beauty of the plains--the freshness of them. It's a new start--a clean page."

Still the guest hesitated.

"I don't believe it's worth while. You see, I've batted about now so much alone, with n.o.body near me but the lowest sort; I've given in so long, with no care to do better, that I haven't any confidence in myself. I don't want you to see me fail, sir,--I don't want to go back on you."

Bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part of his excuse for his weakness.

"That's it," he said, musingly. "b.u.t.ting about alone. It's that--loneliness--that's responsible for so many things."

Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by you--some friend who knew--who comprehended----"

Waring laughed. "I haven't such a one."

"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you.

I'll go West with you myself to-morrow--on Christmas day. I need a change. I want to get away for a little time."

Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen. Cold Anglo-Saxon as he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him seem almost lunatic. He stared blankly.

"It's simpler than it looks." Bulstrode attempted conventionally to shear it of a little of its eccentricity. "There's every reason why I should look after my property out there. I've never seen it at all."

"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly,--"not worth it."

"You will be."

"Don't hope it."

"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by you till you are--if you'll say the word."

Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The _word_?"

"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those--they're as good any--will you stand by _me_----?"

Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man seized the other's outstretched hand. "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven!

I will!"

It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode the round full disk of the Christmas moon.

The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly plans to the background. Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed the threshold of his drawing-room.

Well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two thousand miles away! "Waring thinks himself a vagrant--and so, poor chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind." Jimmy reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to the end, would be the reward?

"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire--and it's the one thing forbidden--I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!"

He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn out the light, when, with his hand on the electric b.u.t.ton, he paused, for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call--a cry.

Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the bal.u.s.ters the open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare themselves to be scuffling--struggling--the half-cry of a m.u.f.fled voice--a fall, then Bulstrode started.

"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy.

On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with all the animus of a bird of prey.

The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on his chest, Waring held the big man under.

"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir? I've got him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him."

Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him. He c.o.c.ked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly:

"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?"

"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?"

"No," said that gentleman. "I'll cover him so. What's the truth?"