nature during a walking tour."
"A poet, eh! Yes, I remember your rhapsodies about Shelley and Keats at school. So you've followed in their footsteps, Roger. 'The child's the father of the man.' That's the Bible, isn't it?"
"I've got a hazy idea that Wordsworth said something like it," responded Axton, drily. "Yes, I'm a poet. And you?"
"I'm the prose to your poetry. You study nature, I study man."
"Taken Pope's advice, no doubt. A novelist?"
"No; not a paying line nowadays. Overcrowded."
"A schoolmaster?"
"Worse still. We can't all be Arnolds."
"Let us say a phrenologist?"
"Pooh! do I look like a charlatan?"
"No, indeed, Fanks! Eh, Fanks," repeated Axton, struck with a sudden idea, and pushing his chair away from that of his companion. "Why, you're a detective down here about that—that suicide."
"What wonderful penetration!" said Octavius, laughing. "How did you hit upon that idea, my friend?"
Roger Axton's hand went up to his fair moustache, which hardly concealed the quivering of his lips, and he laughed in an uneasy manner.
"Circumstantial evidence," he said at last, hurriedly. "The barmaid told me that a London detective called Fangs was down here on account of the—the suicide, and allowing for her misuse of the name, and your unexpected presence here, it struck me—"
"That I must be the man," finished Fanks, shooting a keen glance at the somewhat careworn face of his school friend. "Well, you are perfectly right. I am Octavius Fanks, of Scotland Yard, detective, formerly Octavius Rixton, of nowhere in particular, idler. You don't seem to relish the idea of my being a bloodhound of the law."
"I—I—er—well, I certainly don't see why a detective shouldn't be as respectable as any other man. Still—"
"There's a kind of Dr. Fell dislike towards him," responded Octavius, composedly. "Yes, that's true enough, though intensely ridiculous. People always seem to be afraid of a detective. I don't know why, unless, maybe, it's their guilty conscience."
"Their conscience?" faltered Axton, with an obvious effort.
"I said 'their guilty conscience'" corrected Fanks, with emphasis. "I'll tell you all about it, Roger. But first take your face out of the shadow, and let me have a look at you. I want to see how the boy of seventeen looks as the man of seven-and-twenty."
Reluctantly—very reluctantly, Roger Axton did as he was requested, and when the yellow light shone full on his face, the detective stared steadily at him, with the keen look of one accustomed to read every line, every wrinkle, every light, every shadow on the features of his fellow-men, and skilled to understand the meanings thereof.
It was a handsome young face of the fresh-coloured Saxon type, but just now looked strangely haggard and careworn. Dark circles under the bright blue eyes, the complexion faded from healthy hues to a dull unnatural white; and the yellow hair tossed in careless disorder from off the high forehead, whereon deep lines between the arched eyebrows betrayed vexation or secret trouble—perhaps both. A face that should have worn a merry smile, but did not; lips that should have shown the white teeth in a happy laugh, but did not; eyes that should have burned with poetic fire, with jocund good-humour, with love fire, but did not. No! this face that was young, and should have looked young, bore the impress of a disturbed mind, of a spirit ill at ease, and the keen-eyed detective, withdrawing his gaze with a sigh from the face, let it rest on the figure of Roger Axton.
No effeminacy there, in spite of the girlish delicacy of the face and the gentle look in the blue eyes. On the contrary, a stalwart, muscular frame, well developed, and heavily knit. Plenty of bone, and flesh, and muscle, over six feet in height, an undefinable look of latent strength, of easy consciousness of power. Yes, Roger Axton was not an antagonist to be despised, and looked more like a fighting man-at-arms than a peaceful poet.
He bore the scrutiny of Mr. Fanks, however, with obvious discomposure, and the hand holding the well-worn briar-root, which he was filling from his tobacco-pouch, trembled slightly in spite of all his efforts to steady the muscles.
"Well!" he said at length, striking a match, "I see you bring your detective habits into private life, which must be pleasant for your friends. May I ask if you are satisfied?"
"The face," observed Octavius, leisurely waving his hand to disperse the smoke-clouds rolling from the briar-root of his companion, "the face is not that of a happy man!"
"It would be very curious if it was," replied Axton, sulkily, "seeing that the owner is not happy."
"Youth, good looks, genius, health," said Fanks, reflectively. "With all these you ought to be happy, Roger."
"No doubt! But what I ought to be and what I am, are two very different things."
"Judging by your face, they certainly are," retorted the detective, drily; "but what is the matter with you, grumbler? Are you hard up?"
"No! I have a sufficiency of this world's goods."
"The critics have been abusing your last poems, perhaps?"
"Pooh! I'm used to that."
"Ah! then there's only one reason left. You are in love?"
"True, oh king," said Roger, drawing hard at his pipe, "I am in love."
"Tell me all about it," said Fanks, curling himself up luxuriously in his chair. "I adore love confidences. When you were a small nuisance at school, you told me all your troubles, and I consoled you. Do so now, and—"
"No! no!" cried Axton, suddenly, "you can't console me now. No one can do that."
"That remains to be seen," said Fanks, smiling. "Come now, Roger, tell me your trouble. Though we have been parted for ten years, I have often thought of my school friend. Unburden your heart to me; it will relieve your mind if it does nothing else."
Thus adjured, Roger brightened up, and settling himself comfortably in his chair, put his feet against the mantelpiece, blew a thick cloud of smoke, and began to tell his story.
"I'm afraid my story hasn't the merit of novelty," he said, candidly. "After you left school I remained, as you know. Then my parents died—within a few months of each other—and I found myself a well-provided orphan. When I say well-provided, I mean that I had an income of three hundred a year, and one can always live comfortably on six pounds a week, if not extravagant. Being thus independent of the world, the flesh, and the devil, meaning thereby the employer, the publisher, and the critic, I went in for writing poetry. It didn't pay, of course, this being the age of sensational literature; but verse manufacturing amused me, and I wandered all over England and the Continent in a desultory sort of way. A kind of grand tour in the poet line, midway between the poverty of Goldsmith and the luxury of Byron. I published a book of poems and the critics abused it—found plenty of faults and no virtues. Well, I was wrathful at this new massacre of the literary innocents and fled to the land of Egypt—in plain English I went down to Ventnor in the Isle of Wight. There I met Her—"
"With a large 'H,' of course," murmured Mr. Fanks, sympathetically.
"For the second time. I then—"
"Ah! May I ask where you met her for the first time?"
"Oh, in some other place," said Roger, evasively; "but that's got nothing to do with the subject. The first time we met—well, it was the first time."
"I didn't think it was the second, fond lover. But I understand the second time was the critical one."
"Exactly! It was last August," said Axton, speaking rapidly, so as to give Fanks no further opportunity of interrupting. "I was, as I have stated, at Ventnor, with the idea of writing a drama—Shakespearean, of course—Elizabethan style, you understand, with a dash of modern cynicism, and fin de siècle flippancy in it. Wandering