THE MAN OF IRON

I

When Patrick Carolan Breagh attained the age of six years, the boy being tall enough to view his own topknot of scarlet curls and freckled snub nose in the big shining mirror of his stepmother's toilet-table, without standing on the tin bonnet-box that was kept under the chintz cover, or climbing on a chair,—he was fated to acquire, during one brief half-hour's concealment under a Pembroke table, more knowledge of Life, Death, and the value of Money, than would otherwise have come to him in the course of half a dozen more years.

Upon this unforgetable third of January, his plaid frock had been taken off and, to his infinite delight, replaced by a little pair of blue cloth breeches and a roundabout jacket. Amateurish as to cut, the nether garments displaying so little difference fore and aft that it did not matter in the least which way you faced when you stepped into them, they were yet splendid,—not only in Carolan's eyes. Alan, his junior by three years, bellowed with envy on beholding them; and four-year-old Monica sucked her finger and stared with all her might.

It was plain to Carolan that, having once assumed the manly garments, no boy could be expected to put on those hateful petticoats again. In vain Nurse Povah,—who had been Carolan's foster-mother,—and Miss Josey, the governess, explained to him that the breeches were not completed, and directed his eyes to the mute evidence of pins, chalk-marks, and yellow basting-threads. Their arguments were vain, their entreaties addressed to deaf ears. An attempt to remove the cause of contention by force resulted in Nurse's being butted, though not hard! and Miss Josey kicked with viciousness. In the confusion that ensued, the rebel effected an escape from the scene of combat. And the door of the sitting-room being open, Carolan trotted across the Government cocoanut matting of the landing with the intention of confessing his own misdeeds, since Miss Josey was quite certain to report him at headquarters, had not this often-tested method of blunting the edge of retributory justice failed, through his own fault.

For upon entering the large, shabbily furnished room, situated on the second floor of a gaunt, gray stone building known as Block D, Married Officers' Quarters—the room that served Captain Breagh and his second wife as sitting-room, dining-room, smoking-room and boudoir—Carolan became aware that his stepmother, quite unconscious of his intrusion, was dusting the china vases on the mantel-shelf, and was instantly possessed by the conviction that it would be huge fun to hide under the large round table that occupied the middle of the worn Brussels carpet, and bounce out upon the poor lady when she turned, making her say "Owh!"

So the boy noiselessly dived under the deep, hanging, silk-fringed border of the Indian shawl that covered the circular Pembroke table, upon which were ranged, about a central basket of wax fruit and flowers, gilt frames with spotty daguerrotypes, albums of scraps, Books of Beauty containing the loveliest specimens of Early Victorian female aristocracy, and Garlands of Poetry reeking with the sentimental effusions of Eliza Cook and L.E.L., interspersed with certain card-cases and paper-knives of Indian carved ivory and sandal-wood, and other trifles of brass and filigree ware.

The big, shabbily furnished second-floor room had three windows looking out upon the graveled expanse of the Parade-ground, and commanding a view of the flower-bedded patch of sacred green turf, inclosed by posts and chains, that graced the front of the pillared, pedimented, and porticoed building that housed the Officers' Mess. And when the regiment got the route for another garrison town, nearly everything the room contained—from the Pembroke center-table and chintz-covered sofa, to the secrétaire at which Captain Breagh penned his letters, the big leather-covered arm-chair in which he sat, and the Bengal tiger-skin hearthrug,—would be packed,—with the picture of the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Vimiera, and the chimney-glass over which it always hung—into wooden cases, with the before-mentioned chimney-glass, curtains and carpets, beds, baths, uniform-cases and a great number of other things; and then after a period of rumbling confusion there would be a new sitting-room looking on another barrack-square, other bedrooms and a fresh nursery,—and Carolan would forget the old ones in something under a week. As a matter of fact, the regiment had been shifted four times since its return from India, when Carolan was little more than a baby, and Monica and Alan and Baba were nowhere at all.

Now either Mrs. Breagh occupied an unconscionable time in dusting the vases and making up the fire for her Captain, who by reason of long service with the regiment in the East was susceptible to chill; or Carolan, with the mental instability shared by the child and the savage, lost interest in his new project and abandoned it. He was squatting silently in his hiding-place when Miss Josey entered; he heard her complaint, noted down two spiteful exaggerations and one malicious falsehood, and witnessed the exhibition of a bulgy ankle in a badly-gartered white cotton stocking surmounting an elastic-sided cloth boot. When the governess withdrew, consoled by Mrs. Breagh's sympathy, Nurse Povah was summoned from the other side of the landing by a tinkle of the hand-bell, and bore stout witness on the culprit's side.

"Did ye see her leg, I'd make so bould as ask, or did ye take her worrud for ut? And—av there was anythin' to show barrin' a flaybite, is ut natheral a boy wud parrut wid his furrst breches widout a kick? Sure, they're the apple av his eye, and the joy av his harrut! And her—wid her talk av bendin' his will and breakin' his temper! is ut like ye wud lay a finger on the Captain's eldest son, to plaze the likes of her?"

"The Captain has said himself—over and over—that a sound thrashing would be a capital thing for Carry," Mrs. Breagh returned.

"He praiches—ay, bedad!—but does he ever practuss?" demanded Nurse, smoothing her apron with stout, matronly hands, and getting very red in the cheeks. "Niver fear but he'd be too wise to bring a curse upon himself by ill-thrating a motherless child!"

"Motherless!" What did the word mean? Carolan wondered, recalling how Nurse would describe some particularly down-hearted person as being as long in the jaw as a motherless calf. And now Mrs. Breagh was saying, in the kind of voice some good people use for the purpose of Scriptural quotation, and which is not in the least like their accents of every day...

"Solomon said, 'He that spareth the rod'—but you Catholics never seem to read the Bible. And I always treat Carolan as if he were my own child—and you know I do! 'Ssh! Here comes the Captain—and I think I hear Baba crying...."

And Nurse, with the honors of war, retired to the nursery on the other side of the landing, as Captain Breagh's hasty footsteps and the jingle of his scabbard were heard on the stone stair. A minute later he entered the room. But during the minute's interval Carolan had had time to ponder, mentally digest and form a conclusion from what he had just heard.

It had never previously occurred to him that the stout, dark, beady-eyed, brightly dressed lady whom he had been taught to call Mamma was not really his mother, but he knew it now. It was revealed to him in one lightning-flash of comprehension that this was the reason why her hands felt so like hands of wood whenever they touched him, and why her kiss,—religiously administered night and morning—was a thing he would much sooner have gone without. He knew,—and something inside him was glad to know—that it was not wicked of him not to love her as he loved Nurse, or Monica, or Ponto the brown retriever. And then his heart dropped like a leaden plummet to the pit of his infant stomach. This was to be a day of discoveries. He had discovered that by kicking out lustily it had been possible to resist the forcible removal of his new breeches. He had discovered that "Mamma" was not his real, real mother! Would Daddy turn out to be Monica's and Alan's and Baba's Daddy, and not Carolan's, after all?

A sob rose in his throat, and his hot, dry eyes began to smart and water. But the manly trampling and clanking came nearer. The door opened—his father was in the room. He could only see his shiny Wellington boots, and the bottoms of the red-striped dark blue breeches that were strapped over them. But familiar knowledge built from the boots the handsome manly figure in the light brick-red coat with the Royal blue facings, the China and Punjab war-medals, the crimson sash and the other martial accouterments topped by the stiff leather stock, and the head whose wealth of jet-black curls and luxuriant bushy whiskers might have been the glory of a fashionable hairdresser's window; in combination with the well-cut features, light blue eyes, and fine rosy complexion, as yet scarcely deteriorated by Mess port, whisky punch, and late hours.

Captain Breagh kissed Mrs. Breagh with a hearty smack that made Carolan start in his hiding-place, and said the wind was enough to cut you in two, and that the fire looked tempting; as he laid down his pipeclayed gloves and dress-schako with the gilt grenade and white ball-tuft on the aged and dilapidated sideboard, and permitted his lady to relieve him of his sword. Then he rubbed his hands and thrust them to the blaze enjoyingly, and threw himself into the creaking leathern arm-chair. This, it suddenly occurred to Carolan, would be a favorable moment for emerging from concealment. He had got on all-fours, ready to appear in the character of a bear or tiger, when Mrs. Breagh stopped him by beginning to tell tales. The child was beyond control, she declared—there was no end to his naughtiness. For the sake of his immortal soul, something would have to be done....

"What's he been doing? For my own part,—I wouldn't give a brass farthing for a pup that wouldn't bite, or a boy that wouldn't show fight when he was put to it!" The arm-chair creaked suggestively as the Captain stretched out his legs, and the firelight danced in the polish of his boots, hardly dimmed by the dry gravel of the Parade-ground. "And it's in the blood, that high spirit. Don't suppose I'm bragging that the Breaghs are any great shakes in the way of family!—though the name's as decent a one as you'll meet in a long day's march. But Carolan's a Fermeroy on the mother's side—and they're a hot-headed, high-handed breed," the Captain added, taking the newspaper from the Pembroke table, "and have been ever since the year One—if you take the trouble to look 'em up in Irish History. Not that I've ever read any, but my poor Milly used to say——"

His wife's eyes snapped with irrepressible jealousy at the reference to her predecessor.

"And everything that came from her you took for Gospel, I suppose?"

"Pretty near!" said Captain Breagh, and began to unfold his newspaper.

"I get little enough time for reading things that are useful," said Mrs. Breagh, as the Captain dipped into the crackling sheets. "It was my bounden duty to speak, and I've done it! And if you think you are doing your duty by the child—let alone his mother——"

She broke off, for the Captain bounced in his chair, and dashed down the newspaper.

"Haven't I told you I won't have poor Milly's name dragged into these discussions! She's dead!—and so let her be!"

If a lady can be said to snort, Mrs. Breagh gave utterance to a sound of that nature.

"I'm willing, Alexander, I'm sure! But all things considered, I must say I think it's a pity her ladyship died and left you a widower!"

"And you're right there, begad you are! And how many times have I told you she was merely an Honorable, and not her ladyship!" He left the newspaper sprawling on the hearthrug, and mechanically reaching down his pipe and tobacco-pouch from the corner of the mantelshelf, proceeded to fill the well-browned meerschaum, and when his wife lighted a spill and held it to him as an olive-branch, he thanked her in an absent way. What did the Captain see as he pulled at the gnawed, amber mouthpiece and stared into the red-hot heart of the fire, communing with that other self that dwells within every man?

II

I think he saw young Alex Breagh, a junior Lieutenant of the Grenadier company of the Royal Ennis Regiment of Infantry, winning his spurs of manhood under Gough and Hardinge and Gilbert on the plain beside the Sutlej, where stands Ferozshahr.

"For I don't pretend to be a hero or anything of that sort, but I've never shirked my share of fighting," said the silent voice within him, and the Captain exhaled a spirt of smoke and mumbled: "I believe you!" And the other Breagh went on:

"Fair play and no favor won us our honors, mind you! though the chance didn't come until later on. True, we helped Sir Harry Smith to pound the Sikhs at Ferozshahr and at Aliwal, when the cavalry of his Right had driven the Khâlsas back across the Red Ford. Waiting for the elephants with the heavy siege-guns and the ammunition and stores to come up from Delhi, took a hell of a time. Seven long weeks of broiling by day and freezing o' nights, while Tij Sinh and his thirty-five thousand Khâlsas entrenched themselves, mounted their heavy artillery—made their bridge of boats, and encamped their cavalry up the river. But the day came—our day!—and I don't forget that foggy tenth of February while I'm breathing."

Captain Breagh sucked at his pipe and reflectively pulled a whisker. And the silent voice went on:

"We were with the Left Division under General Dick, and led the assault, while Gilbert and Smith feigned to attack on the enemy's left and center. And in that charge,—when the General got his death-wound from a swivel-ball,—I was the second red-coat to cross the ditch, and scramble over the big mud rampart, and saber a Sikh gunner with his linstock in his hand!..."

Mrs. Breagh, chagrined at remaining so long the object of her husband's inattention, picked up his fallen newspaper and almost timidly laid it on his knee. And the child under the table kept as quiet as a mouse, almost...

"Thank ye, my dear!" said the Captain, while the other Breagh went on:

"And when the Treaty was signed and the rumpus all over—for the time!—because Dalhousie's bungling brought the hornets about our ears again!—we marched from Lahore to Calcutta with Britain's victorious army—barring the force we'd left with Lawrence at Mian Mir."

The silence continuing, Mrs. Breagh drew her work-table toward her, and began to look over a basket of little toeless and heel-less stockings. As she did this she sighed. The Captain smoked thoughtfully. And the inward voice went on:

"The Governor-General and his staff rode with Sir Harry Smith and the Advance—and between the Cavalry Brigade that came after 'em—for Sir Harry swore he'd be damned but since we'd seen the hottest of the fighting, we should have the post of honor!—between the Cavalry and Ours came the spoils of war, drawn by the Government elephants—two hundred and fifty Sikh guns we'd taken at Sobraon. Hah!"

The Captain's eyes were fixed on the fire. He smoked in quick, short puffs.

"Standards waving, bands blowing their heads off, and a bit o' loot in most men's knapsacks. Glory for the dead, and praise and promotion for the living—begad! it was worth while—just then!—to be a British soldier! And I'd been wounded just enough to look interesting, and got a Special Mention in Despatches—and the women were pulling caps for me,—devil a lie in that! And I danced with Milly at the Welcome Back Ball at Government House, in March, 1846. And whether it was Fate—or that way she had of looking up under her eyelashes, and showing a laughing mouth full of tiny pearly-white teeth over the top of her fan, I've never been quite clear. But even before the steward introduced Lieutenant Breagh to the Hon. Millicent Fermeroy, I'd fallen head over ears in love with Milly, and she was as mad for me!"

Still silence reigned in the room, only broken by the cinders falling on the hearth, and the breathing of three people. Mrs. Breagh still bent over her basket of little worn socks, of which those in most crying need of darning belonged to Carolan. Her lips were tightly closed, but as the man within her husband talked to the man, the woman within the woman talked to his wife.

"I wonder whether he knows I know he's thinking of her again? I wonder whether she'd have liked to sit and toil and moil for a child of mine, and know that the other woman held the first place in his heart? Ah, dear me!"

She glanced at her husband. He did not see her. He was living in the Past.

"Nobody noticed how often we danced together.... It had gone pretty far with us before Her Ladyship scented what was in the wind, and sent an aide-de-camp to remind Miss Fermeroy that the doctor had set down his foot against her overheating herself with waltzing,—and I found myself staring after her with her bouquet in my hand.... And I took it home to quarters—and I've got it now, stowed away with her letters and a lot of other things in a tin uniform-case.... Fanny hasn't an idea of that!"

The smoke-puffs came more slowly, and the darning-needle now worked busily. The voice of a sergeant who was drilling a squad of recruits came in gruff barks from the Parade.

"The Fermeroys were great folks.... Colonel Lord Augustus Fermeroy—Milly's uncle, was a tremendous Light Cavalry swell on the Commander-in-Chief's Staff. Of course, I knew that he would never hear of an engagement between his brother's orphan daughter—(to do the old man justice, he loved her as his own!)—and a Lieutenant of a marching regiment of infantry who'd nothing but his pay. So—as Milly and me had made up our minds we couldn't live without each other,—we were married secretly—first at a Protestant Mission Church, and then by a French Franciscan padre—and he made bones about splicing us—because I wasn't a Catholic,—and if I hadn't told a white lie or two about my intention of turning Papist, I don't believe he'd have tied the knot. But all's fair in love!—and we were in love with a vengeance. I suppose I was a selfish beggar to coax Milly into deceiving her people, but——"

A long ray of chilly January sunshine, full of dancing dust-motes, came in at the window. Mrs. Breagh sneezed as it fell across her face.

"A time came when I knew I had been as selfish as she never would have called me. People had to be told!—so we enlightened 'em by shooting the moon. The condition of my war-chest wasn't over and above flourishing, but I got a month's leave for the Mofussil and secured a twenty-rupee furnished bungalow at Titteghur—and next morning—before the hue and cry had well begun, Lady Augustus got a chit from Milly by harkára—I remember every word of it. 'Dearest Aunt,—I hope you have not been alarmed, supposing me to have been murdered or carried off by wicked persons. I am safe and happy with my own dear husband, from whom, I shall never be parted now.'"

The pipe was nearly smoked out, but the Captain did not appear aware of that.

"'Never be parted,' and before three months were over our heads..."

Clash! Mrs. Breagh had let her scissors fall. Her husband made a long arm, picked them up, and gave them back to her.

"Thank you, Alex, love!" said Mrs. Breagh effusively. But he went on sucking at the now empty pipe, and staring at the waning fire. And the silent voice went on:

"The Fermeroys were furious. But there was no use in making a fuss and a scandal, and I must say they took the blow awfully well. Good haters both—declared that under no conceivable circumstances would they ever admit within their doors an officer who had acted so dishonorably, but they'd receive Milly whenever she liked to come. Nor would they—though her uncle was her guardian and trustee—deprive her of her fortune—seven thousand pounds in East India Stock, Home Rails, and Government Three Per Cents. But they tied it up tight for the benefit of the child that was coming, and others that might come—in what they called a Post-Matrimonial Settlement, and I was agreeable; though, mind you!—I had the law on my side if I'd chosen to make a fuss. And I was too much in love to bother over money—or to care a cowrie about being cut by the Fermeroys' friends."

Nothing but gray ashes remained in the pipe-bowl.

"I don't know whether it wasn't to get me out of the way that the regiment was ordered to Sikandarabad. There'd been a Sepoy rising at Haidarabad, six miles north of the Subsidiary Force's cantonments—and as the big Mussulman city was swarming with all the blackguards and budmashes in the Dekkan—and bazar-gup had it that another Rohilla riot was threatening—Ours got the route to go. And Milly—God bless her! wouldn't hear of being left behind. And we steamed down coast to Masulipatam, and marched the two hundred miles; and though it was early in January, the roads were confoundedly squashy and the heat was like a vapor-bath—there being no winter to speak of in the South."

"He's in a regular brown study," said her unseen gossip and confidante to the Captain's second wife. "Perhaps his tailor has been dunning him, or he's been losing at cards. When men are out of spirits, money's generally at the bottom of it! Better get him to tell what's the matter by-and-by—not now!"

"And the long road ran like a brown snake between mangrove-swamps and paddy-fields, where it wasn't coffee-plantations and cotton-ground. And there were black-buck and partridge for the shooting when you could get away from the columns; and duck and snipe when we were hung up at the river-fords waiting for the elephants that were to take over the baggage and guns."

The shouts of the drill-sergeant came more faintly from the Parade-ground. The Captain seemed to doze as he sucked at the empty pipe, but Memory's voice went on:

"The women and children of the rank and file were carried on the baggage-wagons, and the officers' wives traveled by bullock-tonga or palki-dak, under an escort of good-conduct men of the Subsidiary Force the Brigadier had sent down from cantonments. Milly laughed at their oilskin-covered wickerwork chimney-pot hats and little old red coatees, and black unmentionables and bare sandaled feet. But they couldn't keep the beggars of bearers from turning out of the road and taking short-cuts through jungle-paths. Then they'd dump the palkis down in the shade, and light a fire of sticks, and squat round and smoke their hubble-bubbles or chew betel.... And Milly's blackguards had gone out of sight behind some trees, and she was scared at finding herself alone and unprotected. And she tried to be calm and plucky, thinking of—what she and me were looking for.... But something trotted out of a cane-brake and snuffed at the palki curtains—and she went off in a dead faint and small blame to her! For there were the prints of a full-grown tiger's pugs in the soft ground round the palanquin—and the place where his hind-claws had torn up the grass when he bounded off...."

The forgotten pipe was upside down in the smoker's mouth now. A pinch of ashes had fallen upon the breast of the unhooked scarlet coat.

"When I came up I made those coolie-brutes eat plenty stick. But Milly—poor girl! had got her death-blow. And the boy was born that night under canvas by the roadside. An old Murderer—Surgeon-Major Murdoch of Ours—did all man could do to save her. But—just at dawn—with the eastern sky all lemon-yellow and pink and madder behind a mango-tope, with a Hindu temple near it, and a clump of mud huts—and some old saint's shrine under a sacred peepul-tree—the boy was born and the mother went out like a blown waxlight. Oh, my darling! ... And the Catholic chaplain—who'd been fetched to give Milly the Last Sacraments—baptized the boy, for Milly had made me swear all the children should be of her faith. And the boy would have died, too, but that my company Sergeant's wife—she that is nurse to my youngest child to-day—happened to be able and willing to suckle him. And we struck camp and set out on the last march, carrying a corpse and a new-born baby. And that night we buried my girl by torchlight in the cemetery belonging to the European infantry-barracks. And it's six years ago to-day—and here I am married to another woman! Are you happy with her, Alex Breagh? She's as unlike the other as chalk's different from cheese—and poor Milly 'ud have called her a vulgar person! I know she would! And yet—Milly never gave me a decent meal, and the servants did as they liked! and Fanny's a rare housekeeper. I've been more comfortable since I married her than I ever was in my life before. Yes, I'm a happy man!..."

He told himself this continually. And yet the knowledge of material comfort could not long silence the crying of his heart.

He took the smoked-out pipe from his mouth, and turned to look at the plump, high-colored, personable woman who was sitting darning his children's stockings with his wedding-ring shining on her finger, and the present had its value for him, and he ceased to company with the dead. His regard, at first chill and gloomy, warmed: his good-humored smile curled his full red lips again....

"Why, how you look, love!" said Mrs. Breagh, and she rose and came to his side. Then she sat on his knee and smoothed his hair from his forehead. And the Captain returned her kiss, and told himself that true wisdom lay in making the best of one's luck generally, and being grateful for whatever good the gods chose to grant.

"No use crying over spilt milk! ... Beg pardon, my dear!—but what were you asking me?"

"I was asking—supposing Carolan had never been born—or had died—whether you would have come into his mother's money?"

"Would I have inherited Milly's seven thousand pounds? Not a halfpenny of it, my dear! In the event of her decease without issue it would have gone back to her family. And even during Milly's lifetime she only had the half-yearly interest. Couldn't sell out stock, or raise a lump sum for—ahem!—for the benefit of any person she'd a mind to help. And husband and wife are one flesh, so the Bible tells you!"

"The poor thing that's gone ought to have had more spirit than to let you be treated so!" said the second wife, who had possessed no fortune beyond a hundred pounds or so, bestowed as dowry on his younger daughter by the hard-worked apothecary of an English country town; and was conscious that in marrying her the Captain had not aspired to a union above his social rank.

"Begad! my dear! I don't mind owning that Lord Augustus hated me, from the top hair of my head to the last peg in my boot-sole. And—when he died—and he did go over to the majority not long after the Fermeroys had sailed for England with Lord Hardinge—when he died it didn't make a pin's difference, for under that settlement I've told you of, the co-trustee, a solicitor—Mr. Mustey, of Furnival's Inn, Holborn, London—took his son,—who'd been made partner in his business—as his partner in the trusteeship. And, of course, the money's the boy's!—though the two-hundred-and-twenty-odd annual interest is paid to me—the whole of it!—until Carry's old enough to go to school and college—and when he reaches twenty-three the whole lump of the principal will be his—seven thousand golden sovereigns—to play ducks and drakes with if he likes!"

"And my poor darlings will have nothing," Mrs. Breagh bleated, "unless,—-because I've treated Carolan in all respects—and more!—as if he were my own child, and that I would declare with my head upon my dying pillow!—unless he has the gratitude and the decent feeling to do something for Alan,—if it's only giving him a few hundreds to start him properly in life...."

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," advised her lord. "My dear, if you'll get me the materials from the sideboard, I'll wet my whistle. Talking's dry work!"

With wifely compliance Mrs. Breagh placed the whisky-decanter and the Delhi clay-bottle of drinking-water near her Alexander's elbow. You are to imagine the Captain mixing a jorum on half-and-half principles, nodding to his Fanny, and taking a refreshing swig of the cooling draft. And at this juncture a head of scarlet curls was poked out from the covert of the Indian shawl tablecloth, and the clear treble of his eldest son piped out:

"Dada, how much money is seven fousand golding sovereigns? And how long will it be before I get them to make ducks and drakes?"

III

You are to suppose Captain Breagh, startled by the unexpected apparition of his eldest son, swallowing the whole jorum of whisky and water at a gulp, and his wife dropping her darning into her lap with the very exclamation Carolan had previously promised himself. Still as a mouse, he had lain in ambush beneath the Pembroke table, with the portrait of the Duke of Wellington on a gray charger in the foreground of the highly varnished oil-painting—representing the Royal Ennis Regiment in the performance of prodigies of gallantry in conflict with the French at Vimiera—staring with bolting blue eyes, and pointing at him with a Field-Marshal's bâton whenever he had peeped out.

Now, conscious of having made an impression, and with a curious mixture of sensations, emotions, impulses, fermenting in a brain of six years, the boy stood upright before his elders, his well-knit shoulders thrown back, his sturdy legs, arrayed in their virile coverings of blue cloth adorned with cat-stitches of yellow basting-thread, planted wide apart upon the tiger-skin hearthrug, and his stomach thrust forward with the arrogance characteristic of the newly made capitalist.

"Why the devil were you hiding there? Eh, you young Turk, you?" blustered the Captain.

"Eavesdroppers," said Mrs. Breagh acidly, "never go to Heaven."

"Farver Haygarty——" Carolan began.

"We don't want to know what Father Haygarty says!" snapped Mrs. Breagh, whose Protestant gorge rose at the Papistical teachings of the regimental chaplain. And then she remembered that in a few years the worldly prospects of her three children might depend on the good-will of this chubby-faced, red-haired urchin who stood silently before her, contemplating her with a new expression in a very round pair of oddly amber-flecked gray eyes. And being a weak, ill-balanced, underbred woman, and a mother into the bargain, she truckled, as such women will, to the latent potentialities vested in the stubborn wearer of the unfinished suit of clothes.

"Not but what Father Haygarty is a good man and much respected—and I dare say you're sorry for having kicked poor Josey. So, since it's your birthday we won't say any more about it—and Nurse shall pull out those basting-threads and sew on the brace-buttons when you're in bed to-night——"

"There! you hear! Stop, you young rascal! Come back and kiss your mother, and thank her, and run away to Mrs. Povah!" bade the Captain, for Carolan, driving a pair of grubby fists deep into the pockets of the new breeches, had swung contemptuously upon his heel, and made for the door.

"She's not my muvver!" said the son, pausing in his struggle with the door-handle to turn a flushed and frowning face upon his sire. "She said so just now and so did you!"

"Then shut the door!" thundered the Captain, but it had slammed before the words were fairly out. And Carolan stamped across the landing whistling defiantly, and burst into the nursery, where Baba—for the moment its sole occupant—was asleep in her bassinette, Alan and Monica having gone out to walk with Miss Josey, and Nurse being busy in the adjoining room.

Carolan's head was hot, and his heart felt big and swollen. He was a person of consequence, and at the same time a thing of no account. Thus the pride that flamed in his gray eyes was presently quenched by scalding salt drops of resentful indignation. He was sorrowful, elated, angry, and complacent, all at once, as he stood by Baba's crib.

He had never until now suspected Mrs. Breagh was not his mother. He had called her "Mamma" ever since he could speak. No question had ever risen in his mind as to the existence of some secret reason for her dislike of him.

When she had seemed most hateful in his eyes, by reason of her lacking reticence and absent sense of honor—for she couldn't keep a secret if she promised you ever so, and was always telling tales of you to Dada!—Carolan had frequently relieved his feelings by going into corners and calling her "that woman" under his breath. The appalling sense of crime, involved with the relief this process brought—for to call your real mother names would be a sin of the first magnitude—bad invested it with a dreadful fascination. Now the glamour had vanished, together with the wickedness. Mrs. Breagh was nothing to Carolan. He was the son of another woman—and she was dead in India. Her name was Milly—a gentle, prettily sounding name.

Only the day before, Carolan had found out what the thing grown-up people called "death" and "dying" meant. He had given a shiny sixpence that had lain hidden for weeks at the bottom of the pocket in his old plaid frock to Bugler Finnerty for a thrush he had limed, a beautiful brown thrush with a splendidly dappled breast. Only the bird's eyes looked like beads of dull jet glass instead of round black blobs of diamond-bright bramble-dew. And it had squatted on the foul floor of the little wood and wire cage in which Finnerty had been keeping it, panting, with ruffled feathers and open beak.

Finnerty had said that the bird would thrive on snails and worms, and Carolan had promised it plenty of these luxuries. He had meant to range for them through all the soldiers' vegetable-allotments, and ransack the Parade-ground flower-beds. But all at once the thrush had fallen over on its side, fluttering and struggling—and Carolan had been so sorry for it that he had thrust his pudgy hand into the cage, and taken the poor sufferer out with the intention of nursing it in his pinafore for a little, and then letting it go free, since it was so unhappy in captivity.

But when he had bidden it fly away it had had no strength to do so. It had lain helpless in his hands, and the strange quivering thrills that had passed through its slender body had communicated themselves to the child. Something was taking place—some change was coming. Without previous knowledge he had been sure of that.

And the change had come, with the drawing of the thin gray membrane from the corners next the beak, over the round yellow-rimmed eyes. Then the upper and underlids had sealed themselves over the veiled eyeballs—the quick panting had changed to long gasps, the head had rolled to one side helplessly—and with a long shuddering convulsion the thing had taken place. The slender body had stiffened in Carolan's hand, the glossy wings had closed down tightly against its dappled sides, its scaly legs had stretched out rigidly and not been drawn back again. And a voice that seemed to speak inside Carolan had said to him: "This is death!"

Now broke in upon his immature brain a flash of blinding brilliancy. Milly, who had been his mother, was dead, like the thrush. He shut his eyes, and saw her lying, very pale and pretty and helpless, with ruffled brown hair the exact color of the bird's feathers, and beautiful brown eyes—why was he so certain that they had been brown?—all dim and filmy, and her slender body and long graceful limbs now quivering and convulsed, and now growing rigid and stiff. And a lump rose in his throat, and a tear splashed on the front of the brand-new blue jacket, and another that would have fallen was dried by a glow of inspiration. For he had dug a grave with a sherd of broken flower-pot in the angle of one of the official flower-beds that decorated the oblong patch of lawn before the Mess House, and buried the dead thrush in the shelter of a clump of daffodils, and said a "Hail Mary!" for it, because, though Miss Josey and Mrs. Breagh—whom he would never call "Mamma" again!—termed it a Popish practice,—Father Haygarty said that one ought to pray for the dead....

Surely one ought to pray for the soul of Milly. She would understand, it was to be hoped! why one had never done it before. Somebody would tell her Carolan hadn't known! Poor, poor Milly! He wished he had been there with his new tin sword when that snuffing Thing came out of the jungle and frightened her so that she had died....

He looked about the nursery. There stood Monica's Indian-cane cot, and Alan's green-painted iron crib on either side of Nurse's wooden four-poster. At the bed-head above Nurse's pillow was nailed a little plaster Calvary, and a miniature holy-water stoup, and over Carolan's little folding camp-bedstead hung a noble crucifix of ebony and carved ivory, so large and so massive that two iron staples held it in its place.

The Face of the pendent, tortured Figure—there was death in that also. It seemed to the child that the breast beneath the drooped, thorn-encircled Head, heaved with long sighs, that the lips gasped for breath—that long shuddering spasms rippled through the tortured Body, bringing home, as nothing ever had before, the meaning of the lines that the boy had learned as a parrot might....

"He was crucified also for us ... suffered ... and was buried...."

And that was why we prayed to Him for the dead and buried people, because He had suffered death and gone down into the dark grave, and He knew how to help souls.... Carolan nailed his resolution to say a nightly "Our Father" for poor Milly to the masthead of determination, unaware that Father Haygarty had incurred the displeasure of Mrs. Breagh by urging the necessary discharge of this filial duty as a reason why the boy should be told about his mother who was dead.

We may guess that the influence of the second wife had inspired the Captain to insist that the hour of enlightenment should be deferred indefinitely. And if any one had suggested to Mrs.. Breagh that she had been prompted by a belated jealousy of her predecessor, she would have been genuinely horrified at the idea.

Nurse came in as Carolan decided on his course of future loyalty, and started at the sight of the sturdy little figure standing, with legs planted wide apart, on the shabby nursery drugget, its childish brows puckered with profound thought.

"Now may the Saints stand between you and the mischief I know you're plannin'!" said Nurse, who prided herself on reading thoughts in faces. "Is ut playin' acreybats on the windy-sill, or shavin' wid the Captain's razor? Spake ut out!"

Carolan spoke.

"Mamma is not my muvver, an' I shall call her Mrs. Breagh always!"

"God be good to me!" said Nurse, quite pale, and putting her hand to her side. "An' who tould ye that, an' set the two eyes of ye blazin' like coals of fire?"

"You saided it!—and she saided it—and Dada saided it—when I was playin' robber's cave under the sittin'-woom table," Carolan proclaimed. "And I'm goin' to pray for Milly—that's my weal muvver—because she's dead—even if they say I shan't!"

"There'll none durst," said Nurse rather awfully, "wid Bridget Povah to the fore! And what else?"

Slightly damped by the prospect of being permitted to carry out his shining new intention without interruption, Carolan reflected.

"Nuffing," he said at last, "'cept that I want to know how much is seven fousand golding sovereigns? For I am going to have them when I grow up."

"Sure!" said Nurse, slightly bewildered, "a sovereign is the same as a wan-pound note! Ye have seen thim things, have ye not?"

Carolan had seen the soiled rags of Bank paper changing hands on market-days, and the recollection wrinkled his nose.

"'Tis quare talk ye have," said Nurse, "about the sivin thousand wan-pound notes. 'Tis a little haystack av them ye would be gettin' from the gintleman at the Bank. Where arr ye goin' now, ye onaisy wandherer? Wid your hoop for a rowl in the Barrack-square? Take your cap—an' remember that wheniver ye're clane out av sight, Biddy Povah has her eye on you!"

But Carolan was already out of the room and half-way down the stairs.

Outside under the blue sky, with its flocks of fleecy white clouds all hurrying southward, it was easy to forget the things that had hurt. The crackle of the sandy gravel underfoot, the purr of the iron hoop in the metal driving-hook soothed and stimulated; the ringing clatter when one got upon the cobblestones, and the echo when one came under the archway of the Barrack-gate—were familiar, pleasant things.

Familiar, too, was the sentry on guard, great-coated—for at all times and seasons of the year a nipping wind howled through the stony tunnel that ended in the arch of the Barrack-gateway—and pacing his official strip of pavement, that began at the yellow-painted sentry-box with the blunt lamp-post near it, and ended at the big spiked gate. And the peep into the guardroom, with unbuttoned privates in the familiar red coats with Royal blue facings sprawling on plank beds reading thumbed newspapers, and the sergeant sitting on his cot stiffly stocked and fully accoutered—that had the charm of a well-known, never too familiar sight. To other senses besides the eyes and ears appealed the figure of Mary Daa, the apple, cake and ginger-pop woman, sitting under a vast and oddly-patched blue gingham umbrella at her stall, made of a short plank mounted on two barrels, against the great bare wall on the left of the Barrack-entrance, exercising a privilege permitted to no other, because Mary's stone ginger-pop bottles might be relied upon as containing nothing else....

It was market-day, and the great cobblestoned place, bordered by a line of shops and houses, broken by the bridge, under which flowed a famous salmon-river, was seething with people out to buy and sell and enjoy themselves. On the right hand was the Catholic Church, a modern building of no great design, animated bundles of rags containing female penitents performing the devotions of the Stations round it. While upreared upon the summit of an isolated rock beyond the rushing river, perched the ivy-mantled remnant of the ancient castle from which the town derived its name; once held against the Commonwealth by King James, and with Ireton's round-shot yet bedded in the massive masonry.

The distracting grind-organ accompaniment of a round-about blared on the ear from a field where some caravans of strolling show-people had encamped themselves. Rows of empty jaunting-cars, shafts down, waited their squireen owners in the bleakest angle of the market-place; and in the farm-carts with feather-beds in them, covered with gay patchwork counterpanes, the strapping matrons and buxom maids of the hill-farms or mountain-villages had jolted and joggled from their distant homes, and—the last bargain made—would jolt and joggle back again.

Booths and stalls, presided over by them, exhibited cheese, butter, and other dairy-produce. Crates were crammed with quacking ducks and loudly cackling fowls. Strings of shaggy-footed horses and knots of isolated cows were ranged along the curbs to tempt the would-be purchaser; hurdled pens of sheep waited to change owners; but the staple article of commerce, in the active and the passive mood, alive and squealing or dead and smoked, was pig. In reeking basements below the shops—cellars where potatoes, cabbages, and onions were peddled to the poorest, and turf and firewood were sold in ha'p'orths—piles of pigs-tails, fresh and dried, rivaled the salted herring in popularity, and were borne home, wrapped in red-spotted handkerchiefs, and stowed away in the crowns of hats, to be frizzled over turf-embers for supper.

A jig was being danced to the music of a fiddle and a clarionet on a square of smooth flagstones in the middle of the market-place. And—for this was the West of Ireland in the early fifties—the bright red or dark blue cloaks and white frilled caps of the matrons, the short stuff petticoats, chintz jacket-bodices and bright handkerchief-shawls of the unwedded women; the corduroy breeches, blue yarn stockings and buckled brogues of the men, their long-tailed gray or blue coats and high-crowned, narrow-brimmed chimney-pots—gave charm and variety to the shifting scene.

Not for the first time observed, the half-dozen of coarse, strapping, red-faced women who daily patroled the square in the neighborhood of the Barracks; whisky-hardened viragoes whose uncovered heads of greasy hair, thrust into sagging nets of black chenille-velvet, and uniform attire of clean starched cotton print, worn over a multiplicity of whaleboned petticoats, bespoke them,—as did their coarse speech and loud laughter,—members of the ancient sisterhood of Rahab and Delilah, followers of the most ancient profession in the world.

Prone at all times to hunt in pack or couples, the wearers of the greasy hair-nets flauntingly displayed a pair of captive red-coats. One of them was fairly sober, and sulky at being thus paraded under the eyes of his countrymen. The other, a raw young recruit, half-fuddled with libations of porter and whisky, staggeringly promenaded the pavement with a siren on either elbow; and, being in the pugnacious stage of liquor, was stung by some sarcastic comment from the crowd into shaking off the women who supported,—while they feigned to lean on him,—and challenging the critic of morals, in broad Yorkshire, to a bout at fisticuffs.

"Leggo o' me, tha——!" he hiccoughed to the Paphians. "Cannowt a chap walk wi'out women-fowk hangin' on, an' armin' him? As for tha!"—he addressed the critic—"Ah'll teach tha to meddle wi' thy betters. If tha'rt a mon—coom on!"

"Fight, is ut? Och, ye poor craythur, the wind av a fist wud level ye," commented the censor, turning on his heel contemptuously. Upon which, the belligerent, taking the act as a confession of recreancy, wrenched himself from the women, and, staggering forward, came into violent contact with Mary Daa's plank-and-barrel stall; with the result that certain apples, oranges, and cakes, displayed to tempt customers, were scattered on the flagged sidewalk, or rolled gaily down the gutter; pursued with yells of joy by certain ragged urchins who usually were to be found in the vicinity of Mary's stall.

Carolan clapped his hands with a child's delight in the upset and the subsequent fray, as Mary, vociferating maledictions on the soldier's drunken clumsiness and the predatory activity of the raiders, shook her fists at their flying heels.

"Ah nivir meant t' dommage tha! Wull sixpence neet maak guid thy loss t' tha?" stammered the Yorkshireman, thrusting a hand into his trousers-pocket in search of the coin. Then his flaming face darkened heavily, and he said, withdrawing the hand, empty, "Ah havena a brass farden t' pitch at dog or devil, let alone sixpence. Mak't oop to her, Noorah lass, an' Ah'll gie't thee back agean!"

And the woman he had called Norah said, linking her arm in the soldier's and affectionately ogling him:

"Sure, I'll give the ould craythur a shillin', asthore, and a kiss av the handsome boy you are will pay me!"

Then happened what Carolan, with a child's intuitive sense of things that are incomprehensible, saw with a strange shock and thrill that never quite passed away.

The bright new shilling tendered to Mary by the plump clean fingers with the twinkling glass-and-pinchbeck rings on them was dashed to the flags by a fierce blow of the old, bony, wrinkled hand....

"Take up yer money, ye livin' disgrace!" Mary had said sternly to the staring woman, "and thrapse upon your way!"

And under the regard of many eyes, for nearly all the faces in the crowded market-place seemed to be looking that way, the woman had picked up the coin; and as her comrades hurried on, had slunk after them, leaving the tipsy soldier standing there.

"Had ye no modher, ye fool-man?" Mary asked him, "that ye are hastin' quick to hell, arrum-in-arrum wid Thim Wans?"

And the tipsy young soldier had given a thick grunt that might have meant anything, and hung his head sulkily, and gone staggering upon his way, but in an opposite direction to that taken by the women. And Mary Daa looked after him long and sorrowfully.

"Please tell me," asked Carolan, edging up to the apple-woman, for Mary and he had struck up a friendship over divers ha'p'orths of nuts and pink peppermint-candy sticks, "what are they, and why are they wicked?"

Mary brought round the weather-stained brown tunnel of her huge and venerable bonnet, and became aware of a small boy with a scarlet topknot and a pair of honest gray eyes.

"Who arr ye talkin' of?" she demanded, and there were shining drops of water on her wrinkled cheeks, and the cracked glasses of her huge iron-framed spectacles were foggy. She took them off, and wiped them on her old green plaid shawl, as Carolan explained that he had been referring to Thim Wans.

"What arr they? Wandherin' waves av the say, poisonous planets; thraps for the feet, fiery dhragons that ate up the bodies an' souls av men! Look me in the face wid your child's eyes, ye that will be a man wan day, an' get by harrut the worruds I'm spakin' to you! An' when the pith is set widin your bones, and the hair is thick upon your lip, and the blood is hot widin the veins av you—kape them worruds in mind!"

Carolan thanked Mary Daa, and, having a stray half-penny, purchased a cocked-hat of brown peppermint rock, and went home crunching. He had learned a good deal that day. The mystery of Death and the power of Money had been revealed to him. Also, he had gained some slight preliminary inkling of the forces that are arrayed against the human soul in its march through this strange world of ours, and of the strange and foul and ugly things that lie hidden beneath the shining surface of Life.

IV

Furnival's Inn, Holborn, with its parallelogram of dusty or rain-washed cobblestones unrelieved by any patch of railed-in grass plot, where sooty lilacs and rusty hawthorns make a show of putting forth green leaves in Spring, and plane-trees shed their bark, as boa-constrictors doff their skins, at the approach of Winter—Furnival's Inn, even in the year of stress of 1870, impressed itself upon the casual visitor as a dismal spot in wet weather and a dusty one in dry. But that an immortal genius wrote a deathless work of humor in its cheerless precincts, one would have said that nothing young or gay or natural could ever flourish there.

At nine o'clock upon the morning of a day heavily fraught with Fate for the protagonist of this unpretending life-drama, recent puddles testified to overnight's rain, and gray clouds rushing north-westward across a monochromatic parallelogram of sky, framed in by the bilious-hued, grimy-windowed, decrepit-looking Inn buildings, predicted more presently.

Punctually upon the stroke of the hour you might have seen a shaggy young man in a red-hot hurry plunge under the round-topped carriage archway, eschewing the smaller side-entrance intended for pedestrians. Whereat the upper half of a porter, crowned with a tarred chimney-pot hat, and wearing a brown livery with copper-gilt buttons, appeared at the wicket of his lodge-door, and the fresh-faced, shaggy-haired boy in the battered felt wideawake and well-worn frieze overcoat, had felt an eye boring hard into his back, as, after one doubtful glance about him, he dived between the gouty Corinthian columns of the fourth portico on the left-hand side, and rang the first-floor bell.

"I'd ring if I was you!" the porter had soliloquized, noting the masterful tug given by the early visitor to the dingy brass bell-handle—third of a row of six sticking out like organ-stops on the right of the heavy, low-browed outer door. "And again! ... Don't be shy!" said the porter, who was something of a cynic: "Break the bell-wire, and then you won't have done no good to yourself!—supposing you to be a client or a creditor of Mustey and Son—though you're over-young to be the first and over-cheerful to be the second, it strikes me! Good-day, Mr. Chown!" And the porter touched his hat to a lean, mild-looking, elderly man in black, who turned in at that moment beneath the smaller archway. "You're not the first this morning, early as you are. There's a young chap who don't seem in the mind to take no answer—has been ringing ten minutes without stopping at Mr. Mustey's bell."

"Pressing business, I suppose, to bring him out so early!" said the person addressed.

A glance of intelligence may have been exchanged between Mr. Chown and the porter, but there were no further words. Mr. Chown passed on, and joined the younger man on the doorstep under the fourth portico on the left side, as he prepared to fulfill the porter's prophecy about breaking the bell-wire; and said, shifting his umbrella to the hand that held a shiny bag of legal appearance, and drawing a shabby latchkey from the pocket of his vest:

"Excuse me, but if it is a business appointment with Mr. Mustey Junior,"—he tapped the key upon the tarnished brass door-handle as though to knock some grains of dust out of the words, and went on, punctuating his utterances with more tapping—"I happen to know"—tap-tap-tap—"that he won't be here to-day." He added, as he took a brief, comprehensive survey of the healthy, square-shouldered, well-built youngster of some five feet eight (with a hopeful promise of more inches in the breadth of the shoulders, and the depth of the chest), buttoned up in the rough frieze garment that had seen hard wear. "But possibly it is the head of the Firm" (tap-tap) "you want, and not Son? ... In which case I'm afraid you'll have to wait some time, as the old gentleman stayed very late at work yesterday. I should mention that I am employed in the capacity of head-clerk by" (tap) "a firm of solicitors who have offices on the ground-floor immediately underneath Mustey and Son" (tap), "and——"

Mr. Chown, still industriously tapping, nodded at the lowest of a series of legends in letters of black paint, flanking the right-hand row of bells, and setting forth the titles of "Wotherspoon and Cadderby, Attorneys and Commissioners of Oaths." He continued: "And though I was detained myself, and did not leave till eight-thirty, I noticed particularly—when I shut the front-door behind me, that the gas in Mr. Mustey Senior's private room was burning still."

"For the matter of that, it's burning now!" said the strange young man, whose head was plentifully covered with a crop of decidedly red and obstinately curly hair, crowned with the battered gray felt wideawake previously mentioned; and whose square, blunt-featured, fresh-colored, rather freckled face was illuminated with a pair of very clear and intelligent eyes of a good gray, curiously flecked with yellow. He indicated with a knotty vine-stick he carried two dingy, wire-blinded windows on the first floor, and Messrs. Wotherspoon and Cadderby's head-clerk, with an irrepressible start of consternation, saw that the darkness of the room behind them was thrown into relief by a greenish patch of radiance that indicated the position of a paper-shaded gas reading-lamp which to his knowledge hung over the heavy writing-table that occupied the middle of the elder Mustey's private room.

"God bless my soul, so it is!"

The speaker, with a tallowy change in his complexion, stepped backward from the doorstep to the pavement, conveyed himself in the same crab-like fashion to the center of the quadrangle of ancient buildings constituting the Inn, and so stood, staring up at the window with the yellow-green flare behind the dusty brown wire-blinds, and tapping his latchkey on his chin as he had tapped it on the door-knob. Then he rejoined the other to say, with rather a perturbed and dubious air:

"If your business could wait half an hour or so, and you—being a stranger, as I take it?—and new to the sights of London—were to indulge in a little walk along Holborn—say as far as Bloomsbury Street—and drop in at the British Museum, and have a look at the Elgin Marbles or the Assyrian Bulls,—or the—the Mummies in the Egyptian Department,—and then come back again,—you might stand a better chance of getting the bell answered." The speaker added, meeting a look of decided obstinacy, quite in keeping with the pouting, deeply-cut lips and the square chin with a cleft in it: "Unless you can suggest a better idea, you know...."

"My idea is to stop here and ring until the bell is answered. But I am obliged to you all the same!" said the young man.

"You've waited long enough, you think?" hesitated Messrs. Wotherspoon and Cadderby's head-clerk.

The answer came with a flash of strong white teeth in the fresh-colored countenance that was dusted with dark brown freckles.

"Just twenty-three years," said the shaggy-haired young man.

"Lord bless me!" said Mr. Chown, "you must have begun waiting in your cradle! But time flies and business presses, and——"

"My view exactly!" returned the freckled young man, as the head-clerk inserted his latchkey into the heavy door and it swung slowly backward, revealing a bare and gloomy hall wainscoted with grimy oak and hung with mildewed flock-paper. "Donnerwetter! how you smell here!" he commented, having taken in a chestful of the medium that served the inhabitants of the Inn buildings for air. "But I suppose you're used to it!"

"Comparing our atmosphere with that of other London offices, I should be inclined to call us rather fresh than otherwise," said Mr. Chown, who had dropped his latchkey and was groping for it on the dirty floor by the oblong of daylight admitted by the open hall-door. "But I suppose—as some of the gentlemen who rent chambers here are still away on their vacations—the place might seem—to a stranger from the country—a trifle close."

"Stuffy!" corrected the young man, whose expression of disgust was highly uncomplimentary. "Drainy, black-beetly, mousey, dusty, cellary. With a tinge of escaped gas and a something else that I——" He sniffed and said, puckering a sagacious nose: "Why, it's gunpowder! The place is chock-full of the fumes of burnt gunpowder.... Here! Hallo! What the devil are you trying to do? What do you mean?"

For the other, who had risen to his feet with a reversion to the sallow change of countenance previously observed in him, had caught him by the arm, as his eager foot had touched a dilapidated mat that lay as a snare for the unwary at the foot of the uncarpeted staircase, and with unexpected strength and quickness had swung him to the hall-door, and was endeavoring to push him over the threshold.

"I mean——" Mr. Chown was of middle age and evidently quite unused to wrestling: and as he strove with the shaggy young man upon the threshold of the dingy hall, it was evident that he would very soon give in. "I mean..." he panted, "... that you ... can't you be sensible?"

"I should be a fool if I couldn't see that you're hiding something. Let go!" said the red-haired young man, not at all malevolently, "or I shall have to hurt you! I'm going upstairs, and you can't stop me! What harm do you think I am going to do to the white-haired old man who's lying fast asleep across his table? I shan't go in without knocking, if that's what you're thinking of! And what harm do you suppose he's going to do to me?"

A sullen bang answered, for Mr. Chown had reached out a wary hand behind his own respectable back, and grabbed at the dim brass knob and slammed the heavy door upon himself and his antagonist. There were circles round his eyes, and he puffed and panted heavily.

"You young—puff—idiot!" he gasped, "I'm not—whoof!—considering you—for—a—whuff!—moment. It's him,"—he pulled out a colored handkerchief and mopped his face—"him that I've known since I was first articled, and had many a kindly word from, and many a liberal present. And now that this has happened—I may say I've seen it coming, and many a night I've stayed here—knowing him busy over his accounts above, and many a time I've been on the point of going up and knocking and offering a word of sympathy. But—it wasn't to be done! ... You could never take a liberty with him, alive—and no one shall if I can stop 'em—now that he isn't!"

"Now that he—why, man!—you don't mean to say——"

They confronted each other on the doorstep, and the shaggy, obstinate young man had now flushed to ripe tomato-color as he stammered:

"You don't mean he's dead? It isn't possible!"

"I say nothing and I mean nothing. There's no third party present," asserted Mr. Chown, with professional caution, "to testify to what I said or didn't say. But his son has to be looked for, and brought here if they can find him—and if Mr. William can't be found—and without prejudice I think that's more than likely!—some one he knew and trusted must be the first to go into that room. His housekeeper I've heard is a good creature. He's often dropped a word in praise of her to me, I know.... We'll telegraph—I know his address! Number Three——"

The young man interrupted: "Addington Square, Camberwell."

"Send her a wire! I'll pay!" Mr. Chown plucked a shilling from his waistcoat pocket and agitatedly pressed it on the stranger. "There's a telegraph office at Snow Hill!"

"Where is Snow Hill? I'm a stranger in London. As it happens, I came from Schwärz-Brettingen—it's a University town in North Germany—to keep a business appointment with Messrs. Mustey and Son." The shaggy-haired young man pointed to those first-floor windows.... adding: "The elder gentleman is chief trustee of my mother's fortune—his son, who you say's missing, is the other—that is, he has been since the death of a great-uncle of mine.... For I didn't come of age, according to my mother's settlement, until my twenty-third birthday. And as it happens, I'm twenty-three to-day!"

"I see! He was to have paid the money over! ... Good Lord! Good Lord!" groaned the head-clerk, "what a world it is!—what a world it is!"

"And all this while we're swopping talk, the old fellow upstairs may be dying for help that we could give him!" snarled the younger man, and caught the head-clerk by the shoulder in a grip that struck him as unpleasantly powerful. "Look here!—where is your key?"

"Just inside in the hall there.... I'd dropped it, don't you remember—I was looking for it when you—when you—said you smelt gunpowder," explained the attorney's clerk, "and then it all rushed on me."

"You did on me!—and I thought you'd gone crazy. Look here——" the other began.

"To be at all effective I had to take you suddenly," said Mr. Chown, adding, with a mild gleam of pride, "and you must add—I was effective! And if you've got it into your head that there's life in the poor old man yet—put it out again! For he shot himself last night just on the stroke of nine—and I could take my oath of it! I heard what must have been the—the noise—as I passed out at the gate, and the porter he said to me: 'A gas explosion somewhere in the neighborhood, Mr. Chown, or else it was a thunderclap.' And I thought it might have been thunder—for the weather observations in the newspapers had mentioned storms as prevailing in South and South-Eastern England—and the winds have been blowing from south and south-east. And my wife has headaches when electricity's in the atmosphere—and she has been bad three days past."

"But let's do something—not stand here with our hands in our pockets!" urged the red-haired young man with eagerness. "I'm a surgeon—not diplomaed, worse luck! but enough of a one to give aid in such a case as you've hinted at."

"My key's inside the house—as I've told you!" retorted Mr. Chown, "and unless we were to break down the door—which would bring the police upon us before they're wanted—or one of us could climb like a cat—so as to look in at that window and make certain——"

"Donnerwetter! Good idea!" said the shaggy young man, in whose conversation mingled interjectional scraps and snatches of a language not comprehended by Mr. Chown, but dimly conjectured to be German. In the same instant he had pulled off his frieze overcoat, revealing the unsuspected fact that he wore no jacket under it—had thrown it upon the area-railings close to the row of bells that resembled organ-stops, and mounted upon it, shirt-sleeved, vigorous, ready and purposeful. An iron torch-extinguisher, a rusted relic of the days when respectable citizens went forth o' nights attended by linkmen, jutted from the wall immediately above his head. He made a long arm and grasped it—and to the dazzled observation of the head-clerk appeared to walk up the wall like a housefly. But in reality he had wedged a toe in an ornamental border of sooty masonry of the brick-in-and-brick-out description, that outlined the doors and windows of the Inn buildings; and with a degree of skill and suppleness that testified to no small degree of practice, hoisted himself up. Directly afterward he was observed to be in the act of getting over the sooty balustrading that edged a narrow ledge of stone running before those first-floor windows, and the head-clerk, holding his breath, saw him stoop and peer in over a wire blind.