empty glass upon the table.
“Oh, for the days of sunburnt mirth—of youth and the joyful Hippocrene!” the Colonel sighed again.
“Write—note—Chairman—House Committee,” said Coleman Van Duyn, arousing from slumber, thickly, “mighty poor stuff here lately.”
“Go back to sleep, Coley,” laughed Spencer. “It’s not your cue.”
Van Duyn lurched heavily forward for his glass, and drank silently. “Hippocrene?” he asked. “What’s Hippocrene?”
“Nectar, my boy,” said the Colonel pityingly, “the water of the gods.”
“Water!” and with a groan, “Oh, the Devil!”
He joined good naturedly in the laugh which followed and settled back in his leather chair.
“Oh, you laugh, you fellows. It’s no joke. Drank nothing but water for two months this summer. Doctors orders. Drove the water wagon, I did—two long months. Think of it!” The retrospect was so unpleasant that Mr. Van Duyn leaned forward immediately and laid his finger on the bell.
“Climb off, Coley?” asked Spencer.
“No, jumped,” he grinned. “Horse ran away.”
“You’re looking fit.”
“I am. Got a new doctor—sensible chap, young, ambitious, all that sort of thing. Believes in alcohol. Some people need it, you know. Can’t be too careful in choice of doctor. Wants me to drink Lithia water, though. What’s this Hippo—hippo–”
“Chondriac!” put in Percy.
“Hippocrene,” said Broadhurst severely.
“Sounds like a parlor car—or—er—a skin food. Any good, Colonel?”
“No,” said Colonel Broadhurst with another sigh, “It wouldn’t suit your case, Coley.”
A servant entered silently, took the orders and removed the empty glasses.
“Where were you, Coley?” asked Percy.
“Woods—Canada.”
“Fishing?”
“Yep—some.”
“See anything of Phil Gallatin?”
“No. I was with a big outfit—ten guides, call ’em servants, if you like. Air mattresses, cold storage plant, chef, bottled asparagus tips, Charlotte Russe—fine camp that!”
“Whose?”
“Henry K. Loring. You know—coal.”
“Oh—I see. There’s a girl, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
Van Duyn reached for his glass and lapsed into surly silence.
But Percy Endicott was always voluble in the afternoon.
“You didn’t hear about Phil?”
“No—not another–”
“Oh, no, he hasn’t touched a drop for weeks. Got lost up there. I heard the story at Tuxedo from young Benson who just come down. He had it from a guide. It seems that Phil got twisted somehow in the heart of the Kawagama country and couldn’t find his way back to camp. He’s not much of a woodsman—hadn’t ever been up there before, and the guide couldn’t pick up his trail–”
“Didn’t he lose his nerve?”
“Not he. He couldn’t, you see. There was a girl with him.”
“A girl! The plot thickens. Go on.”
“They met in the woods. She was lost, too, so Phil built a lean-to and they lived there together. Lucky dog! Idyllic—what?”
“Well, rather! Arcadia to the minute. But how did they get on?” asked the Colonel.
“Famously–”
“But they couldn’t live on love.”
“Oh, they fished and ate berries, and Gallatin shot a deer.”
“Lucky, lucky dog!”
“They’d be there now, if the guides hadn’t found them.”
“His guides?”
“Yes, and hers.”
“Hers! She wasn’t a native then?”
“Not on your life. A New Yorker—and a clinker. That’s the mystery. Her guide came from the eastward but her camp must have been—why, what’s the matter, Coley?”
Mr. Van Duyn had put his glass upon the table and had risen heavily from his easy chair, his pale blue eyes unpleasantly prominent. He pulled at his collar-band and gasped.
“Heat—damn heat!” and walked away muttering.
It was just in the doorway that he met Phil Gallatin, who, with a smile, was extending the hand of fellowship. He glowered at the newcomer, touched the extended fingers flabbily and departed, while Gallatin watched him go, not knowing whether to be angry or only amused. But he shrugged a shoulder and joined the group near the window.
The greetings were cordial and the Colonel motioned to the servant to take Gallatin’s order.
“No, thanks, Colonel,” said Gallatin, his lips slightly compressed.
“Really! Glad to hear it, my boy. It’s a silly business.” And then to the waiting-man: “Make mine a Swissesse this time. It’s ruination, sir, this drinking when you don’t want it—just because some silly ass punches the bell.”
“But suppose you do want it,” laughed Spencer.
“Then all the more reason to refuse.”
Gallatin sank into the chair that Van Duyn had vacated. These were his accustomed haunts, these were his associates, but he now felt ill at ease and out of place in their company. He came here in the afternoons sometimes, but the club only made his difficulties greater. He listened silently to the gossip of the widening group of men, of somebody’s coup down town, of Larry Kane’s trip to the Rockies, of the opening of the hunting season on Long Island, the prospects of a gay winter and the thousand and one happenings that made up the life of the leisurely group of men about him. The servant brought the tray and laid the glasses.
“Won’t change your mind, Phil?” asked Colonel Broadhurst again.
Gallatin straightened. “No, thanks,” he repeated.
“That’s right,” laughed the Colonel jovially. “The true secret of drinking is to drink when you don’t want it—and refuse when you do.”
“Gad! Crosby, for a man who never refuses—” began Kane.
“It only shows what a martyr
