"Is that a Chinese invitation, Philip?"
"No; I assure you, Tim. Don't think me such a prig. Why, I came all the way from the Guinea coast just to meet you."
"It's a fine boy you are," said Tim, stretching out his huge hand; "it's only joking I am. If you didn't recognise an old friend, it's thrashing you I'd be, as once I did at school."
"If I remember rightly, it was you who had the worst of that little encounter," retorted Philip, gripping Tim's hand strongly.
"It was a draw," said Peter, suddenly; "I remember the fight quite well. But we can talk of these things again. I want to know what Tim is doing."
"And this is fame," grunted Tim, nodding his head. "Haven't you seen my letters about the Soudan War to The Morning Planet, and my account of the Transvaal ructions? Am I not a special correspondent, you ignorant little person?"
"Oh yes, yes; I know all that," replied Peter, impatiently; "but tell us about your life."
"Isn't that my life, sir? When I left school, I went to Ireland and became a reporter. Then I was taken up by a paper in London, and went to the Soudan – afterwards to Burmah, where I was nearly drowned in the Irriwaddy. They know me in Algiers and Morocco. Now I've just returned from Burmah, where I parted with my dear friend, Pho Sa. He's in glory now – rest his soul! They hanged him for being a Dacoit, poor devil."
"You seem to have been all over the world, Tim," said Philip, when the Irishman stopped for breath, "it's queer I never knocked up against you."
"Why, you never stayed one day in one place. That boat of yours is a kind of Flying Dutchman."
"Not a bit of it; she has doubled the Cape lots of times. I was just trying to persuade Peter to take a cruise with me."
"I am seriously thinking of the advisability of doing so," observed Peter, judiciously selecting his words.
"Are you, indeed, Mr. Lindley Murray. Well, if Philip asks me, I'll come too."
"Will you really, Tim?" asked Philip, eagerly.
"Of course I will. There's no war on at present, and I'm not busy. If those squabbling South American Republics don't come to blows again, I'll be free for six months, more or less."
"Then come with me, by all means."
"I tell you what," observed Peter, who had been thinking; "Jack, if he turns up at all, will have travelled home from South America. Let us take him back in Philip's yacht."
"That's not a bad idea anyhow," from Tim, patting Peter's head, a familiarity much resented by the family physician. "You've got brains under this bald spot."
"I am quite agreeable, provided Jack turns up," said Sir Philip, yawning; "but it is now eight o'clock, and I'm hungry. It's no use waiting any longer for Jack, so I vote we have dinner."
"He'll arrive in the middle of it," said Grench, as Cassim touched the bell. "Jack was never in time, or Tim either."
"Don't be taking away my character, you mosquito," cried Tim, playfully, "or I'll put you on the top of the bookcase there. It's a mighty little chap you are, Peter!"
"Well, we can't all be giants!" retorted Peter, resentfully. "I'm tall enough for what I want to do."
"Collecting butterflies! You don't know the value of time, sir. Come along with me to the dining-room." And, in spite of Peter's struggles, he picked him up like a baby, and carried him as far as the study door. Indeed, he would have carried him into the dining-room had not the presence of the servant restrained him. Tim had no idea of the dignity of the medical profession.
The servant intimated that dinner was ready, so the three friends sat down to the meal rather regretting that Jack was not present to complete the quartette. Just as they finished their soup the servant announced —
"Mr. Duval!"
Simultaneously the three sprang up from the table, and on looking towards the door beheld a tall young fellow, arrayed in tweeds, standing on the threshold.
"Jack!" they cried, rushing towards him with unbounded delight. "Jack Duval!"
"My dear boys," said Jack, his voice shaking with emotion; "my dear old friends."
CHAPTER II
THE DEVIL STONE
Spirits dwelling in the zone
Of the changeful devil stone,
Pray ye say what destiny
Is prepared by Fate for me.
Doth the doubtful future hold
Poverty or mickle gold,
Fortune's smile, or Fortune's frown,
Beggar's staff, or monarch's crown?
Shall I wed, or live alone,
Spirits of the devil stone?
See the colours come and go,
Thus foreboding joy and woe;
Burns the red, the blue is seen,
Yellow glows and flames the green,
Like a rainbow in the sky,
Mingle tints capriciously,
Till the writhing of the hues,
Sense and brain and eye confuse,
Prophet priest can read alone
Omens of the devil stone.
Having finished dinner, they repaired to the library, and there made themselves comfortable with coffee and tobacco. Emotion at meeting one another after the lapse of so many years had by no means deprived them of their appetites, and they all did full justice to the excellent fare provided by Philip's cook. So busy were they in this respect that during the meal conversation waxed somewhat desultory, and it was not until comfortably seated in the library that they found time for a thoroughly exhaustive confabulation.
For this purpose the quartette drew their chairs close together, and proceeded to incense the goddess Nicotina, of whom they were all devotees save Peter. He said that tobacco was bad for the nerves, especially when in the guise of cigarettes, which last shaft was aimed at Philip, who particularly affected those evil little dainties abhorred by Dr. Grench. Jack and Tim, to mark their contempt for Peter's counter-blast, produced well-coloured meerschaum pipes, which had circumnavigated the globe in their pockets. Whereat Peter, despairing of making proselytes, held his tongue and busied himself with his coffee – very weak coffee, with plenty of milk and no sugar.
"What an old woman you have become, Peter," said Cassim, watching all this caution with languid interest. "You have positively no redeeming vices. But you won't live any the longer for such self-denial. Tim, there, with his strong coffee and stronger tobacco, will live to bury you."
"Tim suffers from liver!" observed Peter, serenely making a side attack.
"What!" roared Tim, indignantly, "is it me you mean? Why, I never had a touch of liver in my life."
"You'll have it shortly, then," retorted Peter, with a pitying smile. "I'm a doctor, you know, Peter, and I can see at a glance that you are a mass of disease."
All this time Jack had spoken very little. He alone of the party was not seated, but leaned against the mantelpiece, pipe in mouth, with a far-away look in his eyes. While Tim and Peter wrangled over the ailments of the former, Philip, lying back luxuriously in his chair, surveyed his old schoolfellow thoughtfully through a veil of smoke. He saw a greater change in Jack than in the other two.
In truth, Duval was well worth looking at, for, without being the ideal Greek god of romance, he was undeniably a handsome young man. Tim had the advantage of him in height and size, but Jack's lean frame and iron muscles would carry him successfully through greater hardships than could the Irishman's uncultivated strength. Jack could last for days in the saddle; he could sustain existence on the smallest quantity of food compatible with actual life; he could endure all disagreeables incidental to