“Hallo, old man!” he called out.  “Run you to earth, you see!”

“Yes, I see!” Tavernake exclaimed.

“Come right along up here and let’s talk,” Pritchard continued.

Tavernake obeyed.  Pritchard looked him over approvingly.  Tavernake was roughly dressed in those days, but as a man he had certainly developed.

“Say, you’re looking fine,” his visitor remarked.  “What wouldn’t I give for that color and those shoulders!”

“It is a healthy life,” Tavernake admitted.  “Do you mean that you’ve come down here to see me?”

“That’s so,” Pritchard announced; “down here to see you, and for no other reason.  Not but that the scenery isn’t all it should be, and that sort of thing,” he went on, “but I am not putting up any bluff about it.  It’s you I am here to talk to.  Are you ready?  Shall I go straight ahead?”

“If you please,” Tavernake said, slowly filling his pipe.

“You dropped out of things pretty sudden,” Pritchard continued.  “It didn’t take me much guessing to reckon up why.  Between you and me, you are not the first man who’s been up against it on account of that young woman.  Don’t stop me,” he begged.  “I know how you’ve been feeling.  It was a right good idea of yours to come here.  Others before you have tried the shady side of New York and Paris, and it’s the wrong treatment.  It’s Hell, that’s what it is, for them.  Now that young woman—­we got to speak of her—­is about the most beautiful and the most fascinating of her sex—­I’ll grant that to start with—­but she isn’t worth the life of a snail, much less the life of a strong man.”

“You are, quite right,” Tavernake confessed, shortly.  “I know I was a fool—­a fool!  If I could think of any adjective that would meet the case, I’d use it, but there it is.  I chucked things and I came here.  You haven’t come down to tell me your opinion of me, I suppose?”

“Not by any manner of means,” Pritchard admitted.  “I came down first to tell you that you were a fool, if it was necessary.  Since you know it, it isn’t.  We’ll pass on to the next stage, and that is, what are you going to do about it?”

“It is in my mind at the present moment,” Tavernake announced, “to leave here.  The only trouble is, I am not very keen about London.”

Pritchard nodded thoughtfully.

“That’s all right,” he agreed.  “London’s no place for a man, anyway.  You don’t want to learn the usual tricks of money-making.  Money that’s made in the cities is mostly made with stained fingers.  I have a different sort of proposal to make.”

“Go ahead,” Tavernake said.  “What is it?”

“A new country,” Pritchard declared, altering the angle of his cigar, “a virgin land, mountains and valleys, great rivers to be crossed, all sorts of cold and heat to be borne with, a land rich with minerals—­some say gold, but never mind that.  There is oil in parts, there’s tin, there’s coal, and there’s thousands and thousands of miles of forest.  You’re a surveyor?”