by the physical weakness which Faxon had already detected.  Young Rainer had been threatened with a disease of the lungs which, according to the highest authorities, made banishment to Arizona or New Mexico inevitable.  “But luckily my uncle didn’t pack me off, as most people would have done, without getting another opinion.  Whose?  Oh, an awfully clever chap, a young doctor with a lot of new ideas, who simply laughed at my being sent away, and said I’d do perfectly well in New York if I didn’t dine out too much, and if I dashed off occasionally to Northridge for a little fresh air.  So it’s really my uncle’s doing that I’m not in exile—­and I feel no end better since the new chap told me I needn’t bother.”  Young Rainer went on to confess that he was extremely fond of dining out, dancing, and other urban distractions; and Faxon, listening to him, concluded that the physician who had refused to cut him off altogether from these pleasures was probably a better psychologist than his seniors.

“All the same you ought to be careful, you know.”  The sense of elder brotherly concern that forced the words from Faxon made him, as he spoke, slip his arm impulsively through Frank Rainer’s.

The latter met the movement with a responsive pressure.  “Oh, I am:  awfully, awfully.  And then my uncle has such an eye on me!”

“But if your uncle has such an eye on you, what does he say to your swallowing knives out here in this Siberian wild?”

Rainer raised his fur collar with a careless gesture.  “It’s not that that does it—­the cold’s good for me.”

“And it’s not the dinners and dances?  What is it, then?” Faxon good-humoredly insisted; to which his companion answered with a laugh:  “Well, my uncle says it’s being bored; and I rather think he’s right!”

His laugh ended in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that made Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter of the fireless waiting room.

Young Rainer had dropped down on the bench against the wall and pulled off one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief.  He tossed aside his cap and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which was intensely white, and beaded with moisture, though his face retained a healthy glow.  But Faxon’s gaze remained fastened to the hand he had uncovered:  it was so long, so colorless, so wasted, so much older than the brow he passed it over.

“It’s queer—­a healthy face but dying hands,” the secretary mused; he somehow wished young Rainer had kept on his glove.

The whistle of the express drew the young men to their feet, and the next moment two heavily furred gentlemen had descended to the platform and were breasting the rigor of the night.  Frank Rainer introduced them as Mr. Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was being lifted into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving lantern gleam, to be an elderly gray-headed pair, apparently of the average prosperous business cut.