But the story-teller did not strike that match.  He was merely gaining time for some hidden reason of his own.  And presently he went on with his tale in a more subdued voice.

“I quite forget,” he said, “how I got back to my own room.  I only know that I lay with two lighted candles for the rest of the night, and the first thing I did in the morning was to let the landlady know I was leaving her house at the end of the week.

“Smith still has my Rabbinical Treatise.  At least he did not return it to me at the time, and I have never seen him since to ask for it.”

A SUSPICIOUS GIFT

Blake had been in very low water for months—­almost under water part of the time—­due to circumstances he was fond of saying were no fault of his own; and as he sat writing in his room on “third floor back” of a New York boarding-house, part of his mind was busily occupied in wondering when his luck was going to turn again.

It was his room only in the sense that he paid the rent.  Two friends, one a little Frenchman and the other a big Dane, shared it with him, both hoping eventually to contribute something towards expenses, but so far not having accomplished this result.  They had two beds only, the third being a mattress they slept upon in turns, a week at a time.  A good deal of their irregular “feeding” consisted of oatmeal, potatoes, and sometimes eggs, all of which they cooked on a strange utensil they had contrived to fix into the gas jet.  Occasionally, when dinner failed them altogether, they swallowed a little raw rice and drank hot water from the bathroom on the top of it, and then made a wild race for bed so as to get to sleep while the sensation of false repletion was still there.  For sleep and hunger are slight acquaintances as they well knew.  Fortunately all New York houses are supplied with hot air, and they only had to open a grating in the wall to get a plentiful, if not a wholesome amount of heat.

Though loneliness in a big city is a real punishment, as they had severally learnt to their cost, their experiences, three in a small room for several months, had revealed to them horrors of quite another kind, and their nerves had suffered according to the temperament of each.  But, on this particular evening, as Blake sat scribbling by the only window that was not cracked, the Dane and the Frenchman, his companions in adversity, were in wonderful luck.  They had both been asked out to a restaurant to dine with a friend who also held out to one of them a chance of work and remuneration.  They would not be back till late, and when they did come they were pretty sure to bring in supplies of one kind or another.  For the Frenchman never could resist the offer of a glass of absinthe, and this meant that he would be able to help himself plentifully from the free-lunch counters, with which all New York bars are furnished, and to which any purchaser of a drink is entitled to