“I don’t know!  I’d submerge mine to-morrow if I could find an alter ego!”

“Then, mon cher, you are a fool!”

Blake drank his coffee meditatively.  “Some say the fools are happier than the wise men!  I remember a poor fool of a boy at home in Clare who used to say that he danced every night with the fairies on the rath, and I often thought he was happier than the people who listened to him out of pity, and shook their heads and laughed behind his back!”

Max looked up, and as he looked the anger died out of his eyes.

“Ned, mon cher, you are very patient with me!”

Blake turned.  “What do you mean?”

“What I say—­that you are patient.  Why is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I’m fond of you, I suppose.”

“I am, then, a good comrade?”

“The best.”

“What is it you find in me?”

“I don’t know!  You are you.”

“I amuse you?”

“You do—­and more.”

“More!  In what way more?” Max drew nearer.

“Oh, I don’t know!  You’re as amusing and spirited and generous as any boy I’ve known, and yet you’re different from any boy.  You sometimes fit into my thoughts almost like a woman might!” He hesitated, and laughed at his own conceit.

Max, with an odd little movement of haste, drew away again.

“Do not say that, mon ami!  Do not think it!  I am your good comrade, that is all.”

“Of course you are!  Sorry if I hurt your pride.”

“You did not.  It was not that.”  With an inexplicable change of mood Max drew near again, and suddenly slipped his hand through Blake’s arm.

They laughed in unison at the return to amity, and then fell silent, looking into the fire, watching the blue spurt of the flames, the feathery curls of ash on the charred logs.

“Ned!  Make me one of your stories!  Tell me what you are seeing in the fire!”

Blake settled himself more comfortably.

“Well, boy, I was just seeing a castle,” he began in the accepted manner of the story-teller, and in his pleasant, soothing voice.  “A great big castle on the summit of a mountain, with a golden flag fluttering in the sunset; and I think it must be the ‘Castle of Heart’s Desire,’ because all up the craggy path that leads to it there are knights urging their horses—­”

“Good!” Max smiled with pleasure and pressed his arm.  “Continue!  Continue!”

“Well, they’re all sorts of knights, you know,” Blake went on in the dreamy, singsong voice—­“fair knights and red knights and black knights, every one of them in glittering armor, with long lances, and wonderful devices on their shields—­”

“Yes!  Yes!”

“—­wonderful devices on their shields, and spurs of gold and silver, and waving plumes of many colors; and the flanks of their horses—­cream-colored and chestnut and black—­shine in the light.”