Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty.

His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.
Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.
"Which is it to-day ?" I asked,--"morphine or cocaine ?" He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened.

"It is cocaine," he said,--"a seven-per-cent.

solution.
Would you care to try it ?" "No, indeed," I answered, brusquely.

"My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet.