“Son,” said the eminent lawyer dreamily, carefully placing the momentous wire in his pocket, “a good deed never goes unrewarded.  Always remember that.  There is nothing like the old biblical behest:  ‘Let us pray.’  You for your bed of roses; me for—­for——­” mechanically he went to the small towel-cabinet and gravely pointed the unfinished observation with the black bottle labeled “Poison.”

“To the long-lost nephew, Mr. William C. Dagget.  To the bed of roses.  And to the eminent lawyer, Theobald D. Snark, Esq., who has mended a poor fortune with a better brain.  Gentlemen,” he concluded grandiloquently, slowly surveying the little room as if it were an overcrowded Colosseum—­“gentlemen, with your permission, together with that of the immortal Mr. Swiveller, we will proceed to drown it in the rosy.  Drown it in the rosy, gentlemen.”  And so saying, Mr. Snark gravely tilted the black bottle ceilingward.

The following evening, as the shadows were lengthening, Garrison and the eminent lawyer pulled into the neat little station of Cottonton.  The good-by to Gotham had been said.  It had not been difficult for Garrison to say good-by.  He was bidding farewell to a life and a city that had been detestable in the short year he had known it.  The lifetime spent in it had been forgotten.  But with it all he had said good-by to honor.  On the long train trip he had been smothering his conscience, feebly awakened by the approaching meeting, the touch of new clothes, and the prospect of a consistently full stomach.  He even forgot to cough once or twice.

But the conscience was only feebly awakened.  The eminent lawyer had judged his client right.  For as one is never miserly until one has acquired wealth, so Garrison was loath to vacate the bed of roses now that he had felt how exceedingly pleasant it was.  To go back to rags and the hunger cancer and homelessness would be hard; very hard even if honor stood at the other end.

“There they are—­the major and his wife,” whispered Snark, gripping his arm and nodding out of the window to where a tall, clean-shaven, white-haired man and a lady who looked the thoroughbred stood anxiously scanning the windows of the cars.  Drawn up at the curb behind them was a smart two-seated phaeton, with a pair of clean-limbed bays.  The driver was not a negro, as is usually the case in the South, but a tight-faced little man, who looked the typical London cockney that he was.

Garrison never remembered how he got through his introduction to his “uncle” and “aunt.”  His home-coming was a dream.  The sense of shame was choking him as Major Calvert seized both hands in a stone-crushed grip and looked down upon him, steadily, kindly, for a long time.

And then Mrs. Calvert, a dear, middle-aged lady, had her arms about Garrison’s neck and was saying over and over again in the impulsive Southern fashion:  “I’m so glad to see you, dear.  You’ve your mother’s own eyes.  You know she and I were chums.”