In Which Ronald Barrymaine Makes His Choice

There was a moment of strained silence, then, as Barnabas sank back
on the rickety chair, Mr. Chichester laughed softly, and stepped
into the room.

"Salvation, was it, and a new life?" he inquired, "are you the one
to be saved, Ronald, or Smivvle here, or both?"

Ronald Barrymaine was dumb, his eyes sought the floor, and his pale
cheek became, all at once, suffused with a burning, vivid scarlet.

"I couldn't help but overhear as I came upstairs," pursued
Mr. Chichester pleasantly, "and devilish dark stairs they are--"

"Though excellent for eavesdropping, it appears!" added Barnabas.

"What?" cried Barrymaine, starting up, "listening, were
you--s-spying on me--is that your game, Chichester?" But hereupon
Mr. Smivvle started forward.

"Now, my dear Barry," he remonstrated, "be calm--"

"Calm? I tell you nobody's going to spy on me,--no, by heaven!
neither you, nor Chichester, nor the d-devil himself--"

"Certainly not, my dear fellow," answered Mr. Smivvle, drawing
Barrymaine's clenched fist through his arm and holding it there,
"nobody wants to. And, as for you, Chichester--couldn't come at a
better time--let me introduce our friend Mr. Beverley--"

"Thank you, Smivvle, but we've met before," said Mr. Chichester dryly,
"last time he posed as Rustic Virtue in homespun, to-day it seems he
is the Good Samaritan in a flowered waistcoat, very anxiously bent
on saving some one or other--conditionally, of course!"

"And what the devil has it to do with you?" cried Barrymaine
passionately.

"Nothing, my dear boy, nothing in the world,--except that until
to-day you have been my friend, and have honored me with your
confidence."