the most gallant and most generous youth who ever slipped upon the lower slopes of Avemus.
Wrote Rattray:
“You wondered how I could have thrown in my lot with such a man. You may wonder still, for I never yet told living soul. I pretended I had joined him of my own free will. That was not quite the case. The facts were as follows:
“In my teens (as I think you know) I was at sea. I took my second mate’s certificate at twenty, and from that to twenty-four my voyages were far between and on my own
to hear me, but he heard the click of the splendid spring which Messrs. Deane and Adams had put into that early revolver of theirs, and he could not have come down much quicker with my bullet in his spine.
“Now, then,” I said, “what the devil do you mean by shamming deaf and dumb?”
“I niver said I