"Bet Tommy shook your family jewels out of his pockets mighty sudden."
Lord James lost his smile. "He got them, later on, when the fellow—died."
"Died? How?"
"Fever—another cyclone."
"Eh? Well, God's country is good enough for me. Those tropical holes sure are hell. Tommy once wrote me about one of the Central American ports. You. don't ever catch me south of the U. S. This East African proposition, now? Must have been a tough deal even for Tommy."
"They were doing well enough when I found him, both he and Miss Leslie,—skin clothes, poisoned arrows, house in a tree hollow—all that, y'know."
"Well, I'll be—! But that's Tommy, for sure. He's got the kind of brains that get there. If he can't buck through a proposition, he'll triangulate around it. Go on."
"There's not much to tell, I fancy, now that you know he was the man. You're aware that, had it not been for his resourcefulness and courage, Miss Leslie would have perished in that savage land of wild beasts and fever. Yet there is something more than you could have heard from her father, something I'm not free to tell about. Wish I was, 'pon my word, I do! Finest thing he ever did,—something even we would not have expected of him."
"Dunno 'bout that," qualified Griffith. "There's mighty little I don't expect of him—if only he can cut out the lushing."
Lord James twisted his mustache. "Ever think of him as wearing a dress suit, Mr. Griffith?"