“I’ll venture to say, however, that there’s nothing in the bag that you lost that need give you a moment’s uneasiness.  It’s only your rascal or fool who carries with him that which makes him his own detective.”

“I had a friend,” continued Harlowe, “a clever fellow enough, but who was so foolish as to seriously complicate himself with a woman.  He was himself the soul of honor, and at the beginning of their correspondence he proposed that they should each return the other’s letters with their answer.  They did so for years, but it cost him ten thousand dollars and no end of trouble after all.”

“Why?” asked Thatcher simply.

“Because he was such an egotistical ass as to keep the letter proposing it, which she had duly returned, among his papers as a sentimental record.  Of course somebody eventually found it.”

“Good night,” said Thatcher, rising abruptly.  “If I stayed here much longer I should begin to disbelieve my own mother.”

“I have known of such hereditary traits,” returned Harlowe with a laugh.  “But come, you must not go without the champagne.”  He led the way to the adjacent room, which proved to be only the ante-chamber of another, on the threshold of which Thatcher stopped with genuine surprise.  It was an elegantly furnished library.

“Sybarite!  Why was I never here before?”

“Because you came as a client; to-night you are my guest.  All who enter here leave their business, with their hats, in the hall.  Look; there isn’t a law book on those shelves; that table never was defaced by a title deed or parchment.  You look puzzled?  Well, it was a whim of mine to put my residence and my work-shop under the same roof, yet so distinct that they would never interfere with each other.  You know the house above is let out to lodgers.  I occupy the first floor with my mother and sister, and this is my parlor.  I do my work in that severe room that fronts the street:  here is where I play.  A man must have something else in life than mere business.  I find it less harmful and expensive to have my pleasure here.”

Thatcher had sunk moodily in the embracing arms of an easy chair.  He was thinking deeply; he was fond of books too, and, like all men who have fared hard and led wandering lives, he knew the value of cultivated repose.  Like all men who have been obliged to sleep under blankets and in the open air, he appreciated the luxuries of linen sheets and a frescoed roof.  It is, by the way, only your sick city clerk or your dyspeptic clergyman who fancy that they have found in the bad bread, fried steaks, and frowzy flannels of mountain picknicking the true art of living.  And it is a somewhat notable fact that your true mountaineer or your gentleman who has been obliged to honestly “rough it,” does not, as a general thing, write books about its advantages, or implore their fellow mortals to come and share their solitude and their discomforts.