“It’s from Lewie,” he cried.  “He wants me down there next week at Etterick.  He says he is all alone and crazy to see old friends again.”

“Mine’s the same!” said George, after puzzling out Mr. Haystoun’s by no means legible writing.  “I say, John, of course we’ll go.  It’s the very chance we were wishing for.”

Then he added with a cheerful face, “I begin to think better of human nature.  Here were we abusing the poor man as a defaulter, and ten minutes after he heaps coals of fire on our heads.  There can’t be much truth in what that newspaper says, or he wouldn’t want his friends down to spoil sport.”

“I wonder what he’ll be like?  Wratislaw saw him in town, but only for a little, and he notices nothing.  He’s rather famous now, you know, and we may expect to find him very dignified and wise.  He’ll be able to teach us most things, and we’ll have to listen with proper humility.”

“I’ll give you fifty to one he’s nothing of the kind,” said George.  “He has his faults like us all, but they don’t run in that line.  No, no, Lewie will be modest enough.  He may have the pride of Lucifer at heart, but he would never show it.  His fault is just this infernal modesty, which makes him shirk fighting some blatant ass or publishing his merits to the world.”

Arthur looked curiously at his companion.  Mr. Winterham was loved of his friends as the best of good fellows, but to the staid and rising politician he was not a person for serious talk.  Hence, when he found him saying very plainly what had for long been a suspicion of his own, he was willing to credit him with a new acuteness.

“You know I’ve always backed Lewie to romp home some day,” went on the young man.  “He has got it in him to do most things, if he doesn’t jib and bolt altogether.”

“I don’t see why you should talk of your friends as if they were racehorses or prize dogs.”

“Well, there’s a lot of truth in the metaphor.  You know yourself what a mess of it he might make.  Say some good woman got hold of him—­some good woman, for we will put aside the horrible suggestion of the adventuress.  I suppose he’d be what you call a ‘good husband.’  He would become a magistrate and a patron of local agricultural societies and flower shows.  And eveybody would talk about him as a great success in life; but we—­you and I and Tommy—­who know him better, would feel that it was all a ghastly failure.”

Mr. Lewis Haystoun’s character erred in its simplicity, for it was at the mercy of every friend for comment.

“What makes you dread the women so?” asked Arthur with a smile.

“I don’t dread ’em.  They are all that’s good, and a great deal better than most men.  But then, you know, if you get a man really first-class he’s so much better than all but the very best women that you’ve got to look after him.  To ordinary beggars like myself it doesn’t matter a straw, but I won’t have Lewie throwing himself away.”