“Did you come here to tell me that?” I asked.

He looked me over queerly, and evidently decided that I meant no effrontery.

“I came here to get your opinion,” he said, holding up a swollen hand, “but I want to tell you first that I ought to get ten thousand, not a cent less.  That scoundrelly young upstart—­”

“If you want my opinion,” I replied, trying to speak slowly, “it is that Mr. Farrar ought to get ten thousand dollars.  And I think that would be only a moderate reward.”

I did not feel equal to pushing him into the street, as Farrar had done, and I have now but a vague notion of what he said and how he got there.  But I remember that half an hour afterwards a man congratulated me openly in the bank.

That night I found a new friend, although at the time I thought Farrar’s visit to me the accomplishment of a perfunctory courtesy to a man who had refused to take a case against him.  It was very characteristic of Farrar not to mention this until he rose to go.  About half-past eight he sauntered in upon me, placing his hat precisely on the rack, and we talked until ten, which is to say that I talked and he commented.  His observations were apt, if a trifle caustic, and it is needless to add that I found them entertaining.  As he was leaving he held out his hand.

“I hear that O’Meara called on you to-day,” he said diffidently.

“Yes,” I answered, smiling, “I was sorry not to have been able to take his case.”

I sat up for an hour or more, trying to arrive at some conclusion about Farrar, but at length I gave it up.  His visit had in it something impulsive which I could not reconcile with his manner.  He surely owed me nothing for refusing a case against him, and must have known that my motives for so doing were not personal.  But if I did not understand him, I liked him decidedly from that night forward, and I hoped that his advances had sprung from some other motive than politeness.  And indeed we gradually drifted into a quasi-friendship.  It became his habit, as he went out in the morning, to drop into my room for a match, and I returned the compliment by borrowing his coal oil when mine was out.  At such times we would sit, or more frequently stand, discussing the affairs of the town and of the nation, for politics was an easy and attractive subject to us both.  It was only in a general way that we touched upon each other’s concerns, this being dangerous ground with Farrar, who was ever ready to close up at anything resembling a confidence.  As for me, I hope I am not curious, but I own to having had a curiosity about Farrar’s Philadelphia patron, to whom Farrar made but slight allusions.  His very name—­Farquhar Fenelon Cooke—­had an odd sound which somehow betokened an odd man, and there was more than one bit of gossip afloat in the town of which he was the subject, notwithstanding the fact that he had never honored it with a visit.  The gossip was the natural result of Mr. Cooke’s large properties in the vicinity.  It has never been my habit, however, to press a friend on such matters, and I could easily understand and respect Farrar’s reluctance to talk of one from whom he received an income.