About a week later Wilkins supped with us.  Warmed by good food and drink, his reserve concerning himself somewhat melted.  We learned that he had been but two weeks in Upham’s service, that he had worked his passage down the coast from Vancouver to San Francisco.

“And how do you like the Uphams?” said Ajax.

The use of the plural provoked a slight smile.

“Naturally, I don’t see much of them,” said Wilkins.

He picked up an old photograph album, and began to turn over its pages.  Obviously, his thoughts were elsewhere; and the sound of his own voice must have startled him.

“By Jove—­it’s old Sam!”

He spoke in a whisper, as if to himself.

“Yes—­it’s old Sam,” said Ajax quickly.  “You were at Harrow?”

Wilkins’ eyelids fluttered; then he met our glance with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Yes.”

He stared at the portrait of Sam, the Custos of the School, the familiar of the Yard, of the Fourth Room Form, Sam, the provider of birches, Sam of the port wine nose.

“We were at Harrow,” said Ajax.  “What house was yours?”

Wilkins hesitated; then he said slowly:  “Tommy’s.”

“We were at Billy’s.”

Wilkins abruptly changed the subject, and soon after he left us.  We rushed to the Harrow register.  Yes, in Tommy’s house, some seven years before our time, there had been a certain Theodore Vane Wilkins.  Ajax, whose imagination runs riot, began to prattle about a Dinah, a Delilah of a Dinah, who had wrecked our schoolfellow’s life.  And, during the ensuing week, Dinah was continually in his mouth.  Wilkins had moved camp, and we saw nothing of him.  What we heard, however, must be set down.  Silas Upham asked us to spend Sunday at his house.  At dinner I sat next pretty little Hetty, and at once she spoke of Wilkins.  To my annoyance, Ajax introduced the ridiculous Dinah, the perfidious creature of his fancy.  Ajax was in his salad days, but he ought to have known, even then, that if you want to interest a maid in a man, tell her that the man has suffered at the hands of another maid.  Hetty’s blue eyes sparkled, her dimpled cheeks glowed with sympathy and indignation.

“Schoolfellow o’ yours, was he?  Well—­I may make that feller foreman one o’ these days,” said Silas, with a fond, foolish glance at his daughter.  Hetty could do what she pleased with her sire—­and knew it.

“Poppa,” said Miss Hetty, “you’re all sorts of a darling, and I must kiss you.”

Then she and Ajax strolled on to the verandah, and I found myself alone with my host.  He said meaningly:  “Wilkins has had a tough row to hoe—­eh?  But he’s a perfect gentleman, straight, sober, and a worker.  I’ve been looking for a man that is a man to run things here, now that I’m getting a bit stiff in the joints.  Hetty likes him first-rate too.”

All this in an interrogatory tone.  Of course, it was easy to fill the lacunae in the text.  Silas Upham adored his daughter and his ranch.  If Hetty married Wilkins, the artful Silas would gain an able-bodied, capable major-domo, and he would not lose his pet lamb.  I said, rather tartly—­