Morgan stopped in their walk, looking up at him.  He had to look up much less than a couple of years before—­he had grown, in his loose leanness, so long and high.  “Finish me?” he echoed.

“There are such a lot of jolly things we can do together yet.  I want to turn you out—­I want you to do me credit.”

Morgan continued to look at him.  “To give you credit—­do you mean?”

“My dear fellow, you’re too clever to live.”

“That’s just what I’m afraid you think.  No, no; it isn’t fair—­I can’t endure it.  We’ll separate next week.  The sooner it’s over the sooner to sleep.”

“If I hear of anything—­any other chance—­I promise to go,” Pemberton said.

Morgan consented to consider this.  “But you’ll be honest,” he demanded; “you won’t pretend you haven’t heard?”

“I’m much more likely to pretend I have.”

“But what can you hear of, this way, stuck in a hole with us?  You ought to be on the spot, to go to England—­you ought to go to America.”

“One would think you were my tutor!” said Pemberton.

Morgan walked on and after a little had begun again:  “Well, now that you know I know and that we look at the facts and keep nothing back—­it’s much more comfortable, isn’t it?”

“My dear boy, it’s so amusing, so interesting, that it will surely be quite impossible for me to forego such hours as these.”

This made Morgan stop once more.  “You do keep something back.  Oh you’re not straight—­I am!”

“How am I not straight?”

“Oh you’ve got your idea!”

“My idea?”

“Why that I probably shan’t make old—­make older—­bones, and that you can stick it out till I’m removed.”

“You are too clever to live!” Pemberton repeated.

“I call it a mean idea,” Morgan pursued.  “But I shall punish you by the way I hang on.”

“Look out or I’ll poison you!” Pemberton laughed.

“I’m stronger and better every year.  Haven’t you noticed that there hasn’t been a doctor near me since you came?”

“I’m your doctor,” said the young man, taking his arm and drawing him tenderly on again.

Morgan proceeded and after a few steps gave a sigh of mingled weariness and relief.  “Ah now that we look at the facts it’s all right!”

CHAPTER VII

They looked at the facts a good deal after this and one of the first consequences of their doing so was that Pemberton stuck it out, in his friend’s parlance, for the purpose.  Morgan made the facts so vivid and so droll, and at the same time so bald and so ugly, that there was fascination in talking them over with him, just as there would have been heartlessness in leaving him alone with them.  Now that the pair had such perceptions in common it was useless for them to pretend they didn’t judge such people; but the very judgement and the exchange