He strode by, and up the garden path in the gathering twilight.

Poor ’Bias!

Poor Cai, too!  His renunciation had cost him no small struggle, and he had meant it nobly; but for certain he had bungled it woefully.

His heart was sore for his friend:  the sorer because there was now no way left to help.  The one door to help—­reconcilement—­was closed and bolted! closed through his own clumsiness.

It had cost him much, a while ago—­an hour or two ago, no more—­to resign his pretensions to Mrs Bosenna’s hand.  The queer thing was how little—­the resolutions once taken—­Mrs Bosenna counted.  It was ’Bias he had lost.

As he sat and smoked, that night, in face of Mrs Bowldler’s fire-screen, staring at its absurd decorations, it was after ’Bias that his thoughts harked—­always back, and after ’Bias—­retracing old friendship faithfully as a hound seeking back to his master.

’Bias would never think well of him again.  As a friend, ’Bias was lost, had gone out of his life. . . .  So be it!  Yet there remained a ’Bias in need of help, though stubborn to reject it:  a ’Bias to be saved somehow, in spite of himself, an unforgiving ’Bias, yet still to be rescued.  Cai smoked six pipes that night, pondering the problem.  He was aroused by the sound of the clock in the hall striking eleven.  Before retiring to bed he had a mind to run through his parcel of bonds and securities on the chance—­since he and ’Bias had made many small investments by consent and in common—­of finding some hint of possible salvage.

His strong-box stood in a recess by the chimnney-breast.  A stuffed gannet in a glass case surmounted it—­a present from ’Bias, who had shot the bird.  The bird’s life-like eye (of yellow glass) seemed to watch him as he thrust the key into the lock.

He took out the parcel, laid it on the table under the lamp, and—­with scarcely a glance at the docket as he untied the tape—­spread out the papers with his palm much as a card-player spreads wide a pack of cards before cutting. . . .  He picked up a bond, opened it, ran his eye over the superscription and tossed it aside.

So he did with a second—­a third—­a fourth.

On a sudden, as he took up the fifth and, before opening it, glanced at the writing on the outside, his gaze stiffened.  He sat upright.

After a moment or two he unfolded the paper.  His eyes sought and found two words—­the name “Tobias Hunken.”

He turned the papers over again.  Still the name not his—­“Tobias Hunken!”

He pushed the paper from him, and timorously, as a man possessed by superstitious awe, put out his fingers and drew forward under the lamplight the four documents already cast aside.

The name on each was the same.  The bonds belonged to ’Bias.  By mistake, those months ago, he had carried them off and locked them up for his own.

Should he arouse ’Bias to-night and tell him of the good news?  He gathered up the bonds in his hand, went to the front door, unbarred it, and stepped out into the roadway.  Not a light showed anywhere in the next house.