"He's rich--ended," said Steingall as he slapped the table. "By Jove! I
remember now."

"Wait," said Quinny, interposing.

[Illustration: From his tone the group perceived that the hazards had
brought to him some abrupt coincidences]

"I went up to see him yesterday--just back now," said Herkimer.
"Rantoul was the biggest man of us all. It's a funny tale. You're
discussing matrimony; here it is."




II


In the early nineties, when Quinny, Steingall, Herkimer, little Bennett,
who afterward roamed down into the Transvaal and fell in with the
Foreign Legion, Jacobus and Chatterton, the architects, were living
through that fine, rebellious state of overweening youth, Rantoul was
the undisputed leader, the arch-rebel, the master-demolisher of the
group.

Every afternoon at five his Gargantuan figure came thrashing through the
crowds of the boulevard, as an omnibus on its way scatters the fragile
fiacres. He arrived, radiating electricity, tirades on his tongue, to
his chair among the table-pounders of the Café des Lilacs, and his first