his general air of careless lassitude. It had taken ten generations to produce that finished article, and the man from 37 the “Wilds” wondered what was the real nature of the animal. Physically he was a degenerate. His hands were long and tapered, and his limbs were exceeding small. But he possessed grace of movement. Jim felt a sneaking admiration for the hundred-and-one little tricks of movement that characterized the Immaculate One. But was it only veneer? Were these polished externals without inward counterpart? In the meantime the Immaculate One had taken stock of his saviour. He found much to admire in this amazing giant, with swells of muscle outlined behind the cloth that covered it. No man of his set could have done what this man had done. Sensitiveness, Culture, seemed to negate spontaneity of action. Reason had usurped the throne of Will. Colorado Jim only reasoned in his immature fashion. He acted without reason, on the impulse of the moment. Impulse had its advantages. Had he stopped to reason, the Immaculate One would have soon been the object of a Coroner’s jury. Jim found the slim white hand extended towards him. He shook it.

“I should—ah—like to know to whom I am indebted?” 38

“Jim Conlan, but it don’t matter a cuss.”

“It matters a great deal—to me. I should like to give you my card.”

He produced a gold card-case and extracted a thin piece of paste-board. Jim scanned it: Alfred Cholmondeley, Huntingdon Club.

“I gather you are not the sort of fellah who loves a torrent of oral thanks,” drawled Cholmondeley; “but if at any time I can be of the slightest service to you, you have only to command me.”

It was then that an inspiration came to Jim. He scanned the card again.

“Say, you mean that?”

“Try me.”

“Wal, if you’d like to balance the account good and proper, git me into this yere club.”

Cholmondeley stared, and coughed.

“It’s—ah—it’s a deuced expensive club.”

Jim’s face relaxed.

“I guess I can stand the pace.”

Cholmondeley was at his wits’ end. Of all the impossible things on earth Jim had asked the most impossible. The Huntingdon was the doyen of London clubs; its titled members could 39 have filled a very large volume. And here was this primal man of the wilderness seeking admission!

“It don’t matter,” said Jim, with a curl of his lip.

Cholmondeley set his teeth.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “It’s going to be demned difficult, but it shall be done. What’s your address?”

“Hotel Cecil.”

“Count it as done.”

The great feat was ultimately achieved. Jim received notification to the effect that he was now a member on probation. By pre-arrangement with the Immaculate One he turned up one morning at the big building in Pall Mall. Cholmondeley, who met him in the vestibule, nearly had a fit when he saw him. He had tacitly thrown out a hint that the Huntingdon was correct in the matter of dress—and Jim turned up in his usual garb.

The wind was knocked clean out of Jim’s sails by the commissionaire’s greeting to Cholmondeley, “Morning, your Lordship.”

“What did that guy say?” he exclaimed. 40

“I forgot to tell you I’m a Viscount,” replied Cholmondeley.

“Gee, what’s that?”

“It’s a title conferred on one of my ancestors for something he did for his king. But it’s not of the least importance.”

Jim felt nervous. He wished he might have fallen through the earth before suggesting that he should become a member of a club of this sort. Cholmondeley was mildly amused. He had fought tooth and nail against the prejudices of some of the blue bloods, who had never heard of James Conlan in their lives and had looked him up in Burke in vain. Cholmondeley, half-way through his adventure, was beginning to enjoy it. He had come to like Jim immensely, though the latter’s speech at times wounded his tender susceptibilities.

“My deah fellah, we have a stormy—ah—passage to weather. If I may be allowed to tender a little advice, don’t talk too much—yet.”

Jim’s brows clouded.

“I get you. They won’t like my kind of chin-music?” 41

“They certainly will not. Let us now have a drink to celebrate this extraordinary occasion.”

They were sitting in the lounge when a boy came in with a telegram.

“Lord ‘Chum-ley’!” he yelled.

He eventually spotted Cholmondeley and gave him the telegram. Jim’s eyes opened wide.

“Say, that ain’t your name, is it?”

Cholmondeley nodded.

“Wal, if that don’t beat the band!”

A man that could make “Chumley” out of Cholmondeley was certainly a juggler with letters.

“Why in hell do you spell it that way?”

“Euphony, my deah chap—euphony!”

Who “Euphony” might have been Jim hadn’t the foggiest notion. He relapsed into a moody silence, wishing the club at the bottom of the sea and himself back at Medicine Bow, where men pronounced words in the way they were spelt—more or less.

Jim’s career in that club was anything but smooth. Under the wing of Cholmondeley he was saved from absolute ostracism. Two weeks of utter purgatory were lived through, but Cholmondeley 42 was staunch. Every day he turned up at the club and bade Jim, on peril of his life, do likewise.

“Stick it out, Conlan,” he argued. “They’re expecting you to run away and die with humiliation. When they discover you are not a—what was the word you used?—ah—quitter—they’ll begin to appreciate you.”

Jim hung on. Even when Cholmondeley was not present he used the club. His personality began to have effect, and he soon made two or three firm friends. One of these was the Honorable Claude Featherstone, a healthy, good-looking youth, without a trace of snobbishness or social pride in his composition. He had been the first to come to Jim with extended hand.

“You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Nope, I’m English all right, but America’s my country.”

Claude’s eyes traveled over Jim’s muscular figure.

“Ye gods! they breed ’em big where you come from. I don’t think I’ll try catch-as-catch-can with you. What do you think of this menagerie of ours? That fat man over there is the Duke of 43 Aberdale. If he comes and tells you a tale about having left his purse at home—beware!”

Claude’s acquaintanceship ripened into intimate friendship. It may have been pure hero-worship, but the fact remained that he thought Jim the finest specimen of manhood he had ever known. Jim, on the other hand, began to drop a few of his early prejudices. He came to realize that all men have something in common, and that accident of birth placed no insuperable bar between one and another. Once penetrate that icy reserve, and more often than not there was a stout heart behind it.

Jim began to get popular. It was rumored he was fabulously wealthy—a slight exaggeration—and this helped him through, for the money-worship fetish prevailed even among “noble lords.” Cholmondeley, who knew all the ropes in this intricate mesh of British social life, intimated that a peerage might be bought for £50,000. But Jim wasn’t “taking any of that dope.”

“It won’t make my blood any bluer, I guess,” he said.

In two months he had thoroughly established 44 himself—a plebeian had taken root in a forest of belted earls and lisping aristocrats. But it stopped at that. A retired “cowboy” was all very well