This time it had been shared blood.

Strickland, sitting with his book in the quiet room, saw in imagination the students' chambers in Edinburgh, and the little throng of very young men, flushed with wine and with youth, making friendships, and talking of friendships made, and dubbing Alexander Damon and Ian Pythias.

Then more wine and a bravura passage.

Damon and Pythias opening each a vein with some convenient dagger, smearing into the wound some drops of the other's blood, and going home each with a tourniquet above the right wrist....

Well, that was years ago--and youth loved such passages! Alexander, by the fire, stooped to put back a coal that had fallen upon the oak boards, then sank again into his reverie.