to have been good."

"You had a secret?" asked the Glasgow man.

"As big as the State of Texas."

"And the other man was rich?"

"He wasn't exactly Jay Gould, but I guess he could buy these islands if

he wanted."

"Why, what was wrong, then? Couldn't you get hands on him?"

"It took time, but I had him cornered at last; and then----"

"What then?"

"The speculation turned bottom up. I became the man's bosom friend."

"The deuce you did!"

"He couldn't have been particular, you mean?" asked Dodd pleasantly.

"Well, no; he's a man of rather large sympathies."

"If you're done talking nonsense, Loudon," said Havens, "let's be

getting to my place for dinner."

Outside, the night was full of the roaring of the surf. Scattered lights

glowed in the green thicket. Native women came by twos and threes out of

the darkness, smiled and ogled the two whites, perhaps wooed them with

a strain of laughter, and went by again, bequeathing to the air a

heady perfume of palm-oil and frangipani blossom. From the club to Mr.

Havens's residence was but a step or two, and to any dweller in Europe

they must have seemed steps in fairyland. If such an one could but have

followed our two friends into the wide-verandahed house, sat down

with them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the

lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic food--the raw fish, the

breadfruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the inimitable

miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by

fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now railing

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