"With honours."

He blew out more smoke.

"You are young," he said, "a gentleman by birth, and I should imagine a
moderate athlete. You have an exceptional degree, and I presume a fair
knowledge of the world. Yet you appear to be deliberately settling down
here to starve."

"I can assure you," I answered, "that the deliberation is lacking. I
have no fear of anything of the sort. I expect to get some pupils in
the neighbourhood, and also some literary work. For the moment I am a
little hard up, and I thought perhaps that I might make a few shillings
by a lecture."

"Of the proceeds of which," he remarked, with a dry little smile, "I
appear to have robbed you."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I hoped for little but a meal or two from it," I answered. "The only
loss is to my self-respect. I owe to charity what I might have earned."

He took his pipe from his mouth and looked at me with a thin derisive
smile.

"You talk," he said, "like a very young man. If you had knocked about
in all corners of the world as I have you would have learnt a greater
lesson from a greater book. When a man meets brother man in the wilds,
who talks of charity? They divide goods and pass on. Even the savages