“They’re whistling for us to stop,” I said to him.

“How near are they, old man?” he asked, without looking up.  The perspiration was streaming down his face, and he held a brace and bit in his hand.  Under him was the trap-door which gave access to the ballast below, and through this he had bored a neat hole.  The yellow chips were still on his clothes.

“They’re not two miles away,” I answered.  “But what in mystery are you doing there?”

But he only laid a finger beside his nose and bestowed a wink in my direction.  Then he took some ashes from his cigar, wetted his finger, and thus ingeniously removed all appearance of newness from the hole he had made, carefully cleaning up the chips and putting them in his pocket.  Finally he concealed the brace and bit and opened the trap, disclosing the rough stones of the ballast.  I watched him in amazement as he tore a mattress from an adjoining bunk and forced it through the opening, spreading it fore and aft over the stones.

“Now,” he said, regaining his feet and surveying the whole with undisguised satisfaction, “he’ll be as safe there as in my new family vault.”

“But” I began, a light dawning upon me.

“Allen, old man,” said Mr. Cooke, “come here.”

The Celebrity laid down his book and looked up:  my client was putting on his coat.

“Come here, old man,” he repeated.

And he actually came.  But he stopped when he caught sight of the open trap and of the mattress beneath it.

“How will that suit you?” asked Mr. Cooke, smiling broadly as he wiped his face with an embroidered handkerchief.

The Celebrity looked at the mattress, then at me, and lastly at Mr. Cooke.  His face was a study: 

“And—­And you think I am going to get in there?” he said, his voice shaking.

My client fell back a step.

“Why not?” he demanded.  “It’s about your size, comfortable, and all the air you want” (here Mr. Cooke stuck his finger through the bit hole).  “Damn me, if I were in your fix, I wouldn’t stop at a kennel.”

“Then you’re cursed badly mistaken,” said the Celebrity, going back to his corner; “I’m tired of being made an ass of for you and your party.”

“An ass!” exclaimed my client, in proper indignation.

“Yes, an ass,” said the Celebrity.  And he resumed his book.

It would seem that a student of human nature, such as every successful writer should be, might by this time have arrived at some conception of my client’s character, simple as it was, and have learned to overlook the slight peculiarity in his mode of expressing himself.  But here the Celebrity fell short, if my client’s emotions were not pitched in the same key as those of other people, who shall say that his heart was not as large or his sympathies as wide as many another philanthropist?