brought him to the very point of death, and throughout which John Saltram had nursed him with a womanly tenderness and devotion that knew no abatement.  If this had been wanting to strengthen the tie between them—­which it was not—­it would have brought them closer together.  As it was, that dreary time of sickness and peril was only a memory which Gilbert Fenton kept in his heart of hearts, never to grow less sacred to him until the end of life.

Mr. Saltram was a barrister, almost a briefless one at present, for his habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly to the slow drudgery of the Bar.  He had some money of his own, and added to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner, with a style that was like the stroke of a sledge-hammer.  In spite of this literary work, for which he got very well paid, Mr. Saltram generally contrived to be in debt; and there were few periods of his life in which he was not engaged more or less in the delicate operation of raising money by bills of accommodation.  Habit had given him quite an artistic touch for this kind of thing, and he did his work fondly, like some enthusiastic horticulturist who gives his anxious days to the budding forth of some new orchid or the production of a hitherto unobtainable tulip.  It is doubtful whether money procured from any other source was ever half so sweet to this gentleman as the cash for which he paid sixty per cent to the Jews.  With these proclivities he managed to rub on from year to year somehow, getting about five hundred per annum in solid value out of an income of seven, and adding a little annually to the rolling mass of debt which he had begun to accumulate while he was at Balliol.

“Why, Jack,” cried Gilbert, starting up from his reverie at the entrance of his friend, and greeting him with a hearty handshaking, “this is an agreeable surprise!  I was asking for you at the Pnyx last night, and Joe Hawdon told me you were away—­up the Danube he thought, on a canoe expedition.”

“It is only under some utterly impossible dispensation that Joseph Hawdon will ever be right about anything.  I have been on a walking expedition in Brittany, dear boy, alone, and have found myself very bad company.  I started soon after you went to your sister’s, and only came back last night.  That scoundrel Levison promised me seventy-five this afternoon; but whether I shall get it out of him is a fact only known to himself and the powers with which he holds communion.  And was the rustic business pleasant, Gil?  Did you take kindly to the syllabubs and new milk, the summer sunrise over dewy fields, the pretty dairy-maids, and prize pigs, and daily inspections of the home-farm? or did you find life rather dull down at Lidford?  I know the place well enough, and all the country round about there.  I have stayed at Heatherly with Sir David Forster more than once for the shooting season.  A pleasant fellow Forster, in a dissipated good-for-nothing kind of way, always up to his eyes in debt.  Did you happen to meet him while you were down there?”