The Wood Fire in No. 3

But the perfume of the violets and the way she looked at me.

Jack stopped, bent over, and gazed into the smouldering coals of the now dying fire.

"Go on, Jack," urged Pitkin in an encouraging tone—they had lived together in the same studio in the Quartier, these two, and knew each other's lives as they did their own pockets,—or each other's, for that matter.

"No, I'm not going on—only waste it on you fellows. That's all. Just one of my memories, my boy. But it comes from wet violets, mark you, not from fry-pans, cold bottles, or hot fish," and he glanced at Marny.

With Especial Reference to a Girl in a Steamer Chair.

"Don't be angry, Colonel,"—no mortal man knows why Mac calls me "Colonel,"—"but would you mind leaving that red rose you've got in your button-hole outside in the hall, or some place where I can't smell it? Red roses have a singular effect on me." I had come in earlier than the others this afternoon and had found Mac alone.

I looked at Mac in astonishment. Peculiar as he sometimes is, hatred of flowers is not one of his eccentricities.

"Why, I thought you loved roses!"

"I do—all except red ones."

I unpinned the rose from my button-hole and laid it in a glass on the shelf over his wash-basin.

"All right; anything to please you, Mac. Now out with it; give me the name of the girl, and tell me why."

Mac laughed quietly to himself and settled down in his chair. For some time he did not speak.

"Go on; I'm waiting."

"Oh, it brings up a memory, that's all, Colonel. You heard what Stirling said about the perfume of violets bringing back to him the little dinner he had with Christine Levoix at the Bellevue overlooking the Seine, didn't you?"

"Yes, but he didn't mention the girl's name."

"I know; but it was Christine. I remember that hat and the gloves. In my day they were black, not gray, and came up to her shoulders, like Yvette's. The eyes, though, never changed, no matter who sat opposite. Stirling bought a lot of violets that year; so did some of the others in the Quartier, until the Russian carried her off to Moscow," and again Mac laughed softly to himself. "Well, perfumes produce that same effect on me."

"Of violets?" I asked, twisting my head to look into Mac's eyes.

"No—tarred hemp and roses." Then he added slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were recalling some incident in his past life: "Quite a different kind of girl, my boy, from Christine; about as different as—well, there isn't any comparison. Yes, tarred hemp and red roses; funny combination, isn't it?—and yet I never catch the odor of one without smelling the other. And the whole scene comes back, too, every detail: the rolling ship; the girl as she lay in her chair, the roses in her lap; the tones of the Captain's voice (I have sometimes heard them in my sleep); the glare of the overhead light, and then the splash. Queer things, these memories!"

Mac paused, and smoked on quietly.

I made no answer. If you want Mac at his best, never interrupt him. When he is in one of his reminiscent moods his philosophy, his knowledge of life, his wide personal experience, his many adventures by land and sea make him the most delightful of conversationalists, while his choice of words and marvellous powers of description—talking as a painter talks, one who sees and who, therefore, can make you see; using words as some men do pigments with all the force of their contrasts—make his descriptions but so many brilliantly colored pictures. Then his voice! Suddenly, without a moment's warning, your eyes fill up, leaving you wondering why, until you remember some throat tone that vibrated through you like the note of a violin.

When he is in one of these moods he rarely looks at me or at anyone who listens, especially when he is alone with some one of his chums—and we two were alone this afternoon, it being Varnishing Day, and all of the men at the Academy. He looks up at the ceiling, lying back in his chair, talking to some crack or stain in the plastering, or drops his head and talks to the smouldering coals, his human eyes fixed on the logs. This habit of talking to whatever is within the reach of his hands or legs—his brushes, palette, colors, the chair that gets in his way, the rug he stumbles over—is characteristic of the man; woodsmen have it who live alone in great forests. Mac's explanation is that he lived so much alone in his early life that he acquired the habit in self-defence. The fire, however, seems to understand, never answering back as it does to me when I try to punch it into life, but simmering away like a slow-boiling pot, giving out a steady glow for hours as it listens, nursing its heat until the master has finished or puts on another log.

Mac refilled his pipe, rested the tongs where his hand could grasp them, and continued, his big shoulders filling the chair, the light of the blaze on his humorous, kindly face.

"There are great contrasts in life, my boy, that never fail to interest me—big Rembrandt things that stand out sharp and solid, sudden as the exit from a foul shaft into a sunny winter's day, white and cold. And the reverse side—the black side. That is the worst of these contrasts, the darks always predominate—out of a yacht's warm cabin, for instance, into a merciless, hungry sea, without a moment's warning. No, nothing to do with my memory of tarred hemp and red roses; only to make my point clear to you," and Mac's head sank the lower in his chair. "Did you ever focus your mind, for one thing, on the contrasts that the two sides of a nine-inch brick wall of any house in town present? Did you never lie in your bed, with your head to the plaster, and wonder what was going on nine inches away from your ears? I have; I do it now. It may be sorrow or cruelty or death, if we did but know—some girl mourning for her lover; some woman crouching in fear; some silent body, cold in a sheet. Not always so, of course; many times the happiness is on their side and all the misery on ours; but the two atmospheres are never alike. Only nine inches of wall! Shut it out as we may, cover it with tapestries or pictures or paint, it is still within that many inches of our ears. What a blessing we can't see! Life would be a hell for some of us if we saw both sides of its brick walls at once. I try now and then to get a glimpse of both sides because of the effects I get of light and shadow—they always appeal to me. When I do I often get a heart wrench that upsets me for days, and yet the next opportunity I am at it again."

Once more Mac paused and looked into the fire, as if he were trying to recall to his mind, among its glowing, heaped-up coals, some picture in that rich past of his.

"And that old perfume of tarred hemp and roses," I asked, "does that suggest one of them?"

"Yes, one of the strangest I ever experienced; and yet it was only one of the things that goes on every day. A steamer's deck was the brick wall this time: On our side a cloudless sky, fresh air, light, chairs filling the length of the deck, whisperings in corners, two lovers hanging over the rail, some in the bow away from intruders. Now and then a line of song wafted from open cabin windows. Seaward, a stretch of steely blue dominated by a clear, round moon, its light flooding a pathway of silver to the very side of the ship, a pathway along which angels might have stepped—were stepping, if we could have seen.

"This was one of the times when I had both sides of the wall in review; she did not. Her heart and mind were on other things. No, nothing that you think, old man; not another Christine—I left all that behind me; not anybody in particular, really; just a girl I met on board. There were a dozen others as pretty—prettier. Our steamer chairs happened to come together, that was all. We were but two days out, and her roses were still fresh—big red ones that some of her friends had sent her. They lay in her lap over her steamer rug. I picked them up for her when they dropped to the deck, and so the acquaintance began.

"Such a happy girl, with a fresh, sunburnt skin, and strong chest, and capable, earnest eyes; no nonsense about her, no coquetry."

Mac hesitated for an instant and a look of peculiar tenderness came into his face—one I always remembered. Then he went on:

"Just a plain, straightforward American girl, with a good mother at home and a matter-of-fact father who had sent her abroad with an aunt who was flat on her back in her cabin most of the time; she herself looked as if she had never known a day's sickness in her life. This was her first trip abroad. Half a dozen young men and as many young girls had come to see her off, and her share of the flowers sent on board had been the largest, and she was as happy over it as a child with a new toy—that kind of a girl. She wanted, of course, to know about Mt. Blanc and the Rhigi, and whether the Salon would be open, and which pictures she ought to see, and what at the Luxembourg—all the questions a girl asks when she finds you can paint. Her joyousness, though, was what appealed to me. I like happy people. To her the deck of the steamer was the top of a great hill from which she looked down on sunshine and peace; no clouds, no dark shadows; only perspectives of greater happiness yet to come. This was her side of the wall.

"I did not disturb her outlook. What use would it have been? Why tell her of what was going on, for instance, under her very eyes? Why let her know that that tightly built young man who seemed to be so devoted to the pale, hollow-eyed gentleman of sixty, sitting beside him in the smoking-room or in the steamer chairs—never five feet away from him day or night—was a Scotland Yard detective, and that the hollow-eyed invalid would have a pair of handcuffs slipped over his white, trembling wrists as soon as the gang-plank was fastened to the dock? Or why let her know that the thoughtful, clean-shaven young man who now spent most of his time in walking the deck had never entered the smoking-room since the first night, when the purser took him one side and, calling him by a name not on the passenger list had informed him in measured tones that it might interfere with his comfort if he took the wrapper from another pack of his own or anybody else's cards during the remainder of the voyage. Neither did I tell her, that third night out, where I had spent the afternoon, except to say that I had been with Mr. Hunter, the Chief Engineer, in his room several decks below where we sat—down among the furnaces and hot steam and plunging pistons—adding that the Chief was a great friend of mine and had been for years. If you ever get to know him as I do he may some time, in a burst of confidence, open the drawer of a locker behind his bunk and show you a little paper box, and inside of it a small bit of copper about the size of a big cent with a crossbar and a ribbon, saying that it was for gallant conduct or something like it.

"But that has got nothing to do with my perfume of tarred rope and roses—quite another affair altogether—an affair that the Chief and I had had some previous talk about; and so I was not surprised when his messenger approached my chair and the girl's, and said in a low voice, bending close to me:

"'Mr. Hunter's compliments, sir, and he would like to see you in his room, if you don't mind. He says if you can't come it will be at twelve sharp, and you're not to mention it to any of the passengers, sir.'

"She looked at me curiously, having heard the messenger's words, but I did not explain, and, rising quickly, left her with the roses in her lap—her last bunch, she told me.

"Hunter met me at the door; the Second Engineer and the ship's Doctor were inside his room.

"'That stoker died about an hour ago, wasn't it, Doctor?' Hunter asked, turning to the ship's surgeon.

"'Yes.'

"These men are accustomed to such incidents; there is hardly a voyage without one or more of them. To me it was but the opening of another crack in one of my brick walls.

"'What of?' I asked.

"'Exhaustion; want of food, perhaps, and the heat. The heart gave out,' answered the Doctor in a perfunctory tone.

"'Do many of them go that way?' I asked.

"'Yes, when they strike the furnaces for the first time. This man was too old—over fifty, I should say—and should never have been taken on,' and he glanced reprovingly at Hunter.

"'He begged so hard,' interrupted the Second Engineer, 'I let him on. We are short of men, too, on account of the strike—'He spoke as if in defence of his Chief. 'Didn't look to me to be so old till he caved in. Shall I make a box for him, sir?' and he turned to Hunter.

"'Yes, and paint it.'

"The Chief slipped his arm through mine, led me to a seat on the sofa beside his desk, and continued:

"'He came aboard the day before we left New York. It was about seven o'clock at night, and I had changed my clothes and was going uptown to the theatre. I stood at the end of the gang-plank for a minute looking up the dock, pretty clean of freight by that time, and this man came creeping down along the side of the ship, looking about him in a way I didn't like. As he got nearer he stopped under a dock light, fumbled in his pocket and brought out a letter. He wasn't ten feet from me, and so I could see his face. He read it two or three times over, turning the leaves, and then he slipped it back into his pocket again and looked up at the ship's side; then he saw me and came straight for me.

"'"I must go home," he said; "can you take me on?"

"'"What at?" I got a look into his eyes then, and saw he was no thief; seemed more like a carpenter or a bricklayer.

"'"Anything you can give me."

"'"Stoking?"

"'"Yes, if there's nothing else."

"'Then the Second Engineer came down the gang-plank and I turned the man over to him and went uptown. When I heard he was to be buried I sent for you, just as I had promised.'

"I had talked with Hunter about a burial at sea—it was one of the contrasts I had been waiting for. They had occurred often enough in my many crossings, but I, like the other passengers, was never informed; such sights are not proper on our side of the wall.

"'What else did he say to you?' This question I addressed to the Second Engineer.

"'Nothin'. I put him on; we ought to have six or eight more, but we couldn't get 'em—short now.'

"'Did you find the letter?' I asked.

"'No; Doctor did. He's got it now. He read it.'

"'What did it say?'

"'Well, near as I can remember, somethin' about his comin' home; a woman wrote it. He'll tell you when he comes back.'

"'I'd like to see where he worked.' I was stretching the crack in my wall; peering into the next room, finding out how they lived and what on—all the things you should let alone, not being my business and the man being beyond hope.

"'Take him down,' said Hunter, 'and show him the furnaces. Here, better peel off that coat and slip on my overalls and this jacket,' and he handed me the garments from a rack behind his door. 'Greasy down there; and look out for those ladders, they're almighty slippery when you ain't accustomed to 'em.'

"'This way, sir,' said the Second Engineer.

"We made our way along a flat iron ledge—a grating, really, beneath which lunged huge pistons of steel—down vertical ladders into a cavern reeking with the smell of hot steam and dripping oil. All about were stars of electric light illumining the darkness, out of which stood strange shapes—a canebrake of steel rods, huge sawed-off roots of pillar-blocks, enormous cylinders rising up like giant trees from out a jungle of tangled steel.

"At the bottom of this morass a great boa constrictor of a shaft, smooth-skinned, glistening, turning lazily in its bed of grimy water, its head and tail lost in the gloom. Beyond this, along a narrow foot-path, a low open door leading to the mouth of hell. Here were men stripped to the waist, the sweat from their reeking bodies making flesh-colored channels down their blackened skins. Some were shielding their faces from the blistering heat as they wrenched apart the fusing fires with long steel bars; others dashed into the mouths of a hungry furnace shovelfuls of coal, blinding the light for an instant, the white sulphurous breath pouring from its blazing nostrils. On one side before the row of hot-mouthed beasts opened a smaller cavern, its air choked with fine black dust; still other men shovelled here, filling iron barrows which they trundled out to more half-naked men before the scorching furnaces. A new gang now joined the group, men with clean faces and hands and half-scoured backs and breasts. This new gang had had a wash and four hours sleep in an air fouled by dust and dead steam. At sight of them the old workers dropped their bars and shovels, disappeared through the door by which we had entered, and rolled into bunks racked up one above the other like coffins in a catacomb.

"On one side of the door through which the new gang entered was an inscription in chalk. The leader of the gang stopped and examined it carefully.

"'Clean stringers inside pocket,' the record said.

"The stringers were the cross-beams tying the ship together, about which the coal was packed; the pocket was one of the ship's bins. These instructions showed which death-pit pit was to be worked first.

"The Engineer made no explanatory remarks as I looked about. It was all there before me. The man with the letter had stood where these men stood; blistered by the same heat, befouled with the same grime, half strangled with the same coal-dust; had eaten his meals, drunk his coffee, staggered to his bunk, been carried insensible to the small square room on the deck above, laid on a cot, and was now dead and to be buried at midnight. That was all!

"Up the ladder again to a room the size of a state-room with the berths out. Inside, on a plank resting on two supports, lay the crude, roughly hewn outline of a man wrapped in canvas, a flattened hump showing the feet and a round mass the head. Past this open door men walked carrying kettles of soup for the steerage. Outside in the corridor were heard sounds of hammering; the box was being made ready.

"Up a third ladder to Hunter's room. I stopped long enough to replace my coat and wash the grime from my hands and then sought the deck.

"She was still in her steamer chair, the roses in her lap. Not a cloud dimmed the sky; a soft, fresh, sweet air blew from the moonlit sea; the pathway of silver was still clear; souls could go to God straight up that ladder without missing a step, so bright was it. From the crowded deck came the sound of voices; some low and muffled, others breaking out into song and laughter.

"'Where have you been?' she called out. 'What did the Engineer want? Tell me, please; something had happened; I saw it in your face. Was anyone ill?'

"'Yes; but he is better now,' and my eye travelled the pathway of silver.

"'Oh, I am so sorry! Shall you see him again?'

"'Yes, at twelve.'

"'Tell me about it; can I help?'

"'No.'

"'Is anyone with him—anyone he loves?'

"'No, he is quite alone.'

"'Poor, poor fellow! Give him these, please,' and she laid the roses in my hand.

"Some hours later the messenger again tapped me on the shoulder.

"'All ready, sir, Mr. Hunter says.'

"On the lower deck, close to the sea, a deck slashed with racing waves in a storm, were grouped a body of sailors and officers; all had their coats and caps on. Against the wall of the ship stood the Captain, an open book in his hand. Above his head flared a bull's-eye backed by a ship's reflector, marking the high light in the composition. Beneath him, almost under the book, which cast a shadow like the outstretched wings of a bird, lay a black box, straight-sided and flat-topped. I edged my way through the encircling crowd and stood nearer, the roses in my hand.

"The words now fell clear and strong from the Captain's lips, every man uncovering his head.

"'Man that is born of woman——'

"I reached down to lay the flowers on the lid—loose, as she had given them to me.

"Hunter tapped me on the arm. He was grave and dignified, and I thought his voice trembled as he spoke.

"'Better twist a bit of tarred marlin round 'em, sir,' he whispered; 'he'll lose 'em if you don't. Hand me a piece'—this to a sailor. 'That's it, sir; a little tighter—so!'

"'He cometh up and is cut down like a flower——'

"I bent over and laid the roses on the box. The men pressed closer to look. Roses, on a man like him!

The men pressed closer to look. "Roses, on a man like him!"

"Again the Captain's reverent tones rang out:

"'We therefore commit his body to the deep——'

"Two sailors stooped down and raised one end of the box. There came a grating sound, a splash, and the highway of silver was broken into steps of light.

"The Captain closed his book, the crowd opening to let him pass; the crew went back to their tasks—the sailor with tarred marlin to finish the bight of the cable he was whipping, the men to their furnaces, Hunter to his desk, I to where the girl reclined in her chair. She recognized my step and half raised herself toward me, as if eager to catch my first word.

"'Did he like the roses?' she asked, her voice full of tenderness.

"'Yes.'

"Where did you put them—by his bedside?'

"'No, on his breast.'

"'Poor fellow, I'm so sorry for him! Did you tell him I sent them?'

"'He knows.'

"'What did he say?'

"'Nothing—but he will some day.'

"Her eyes widened.

"'When? Where?'

"'In heaven.'

"The eyelids relaxed again, and a smile lighted up her face. She saw now that I was not in earnest. Then a sudden thought possessed her.

"'What is his name?' The inquiry came quick and sharp and with an anxious tone, as if she had been remiss in not asking before.

"'He has none—not aboard ship.'

"'Has no name! Why, I never heard of such a thing. How very strange!'

"'No, not among stokers; stokers never have any names. This one was called "Number Seven."'"

Mac stopped and leaned toward the fire, his head in his hands, the fingers covering the eyes. Not once during the long narrative had he looked at me. He had been speaking like one in a trance, or as one speaks to himself when alone. That I had been present was of no consequence; I was no more than the portraits and studies on the walls, not so much as the andirons and the fire. That I had listened in complete silence was what pleased him. This, I think, is one reason why he so often unburdens his heart to me.

Mac straightened his back, rose to his feet and took a turn around the room, restlessly, as if the tale had stirred other memories which he was trying to banish; then he dropped again into his chair.

"That's what I mean by the other side of the brick wall, old man. Makes your blood boil, doesn't it? Did mine."

"And the girl in the chair never knew?"

"No, and never will. He did; he looked back as he mounted the silver steps, and pointed her out to the angel helping him up the ladder. God knew what he had suffered, and wiped out whatever there was against him."

There was a tone now in Mac's voice that thrilled me. For a moment I did not trust myself to speak.

"And about the letter—did you read it?"

"Yes; it was from his wife. The Doctor gave it to me, and I hunted her up. Little place outside of London where they make bricks. Only two rooms; in one a half-starved daughter, white as chalk. She had sent for him, the wife said. Same old story—told a hundred times a day, if you will but listen with your ears to some wall. The steerage out to New York; the landing in a strange city; the weary, hungry hunt for work; money gone, clothes gone, strength gone—then the inevitable. This one had made one last effort, even to giving his body to be burned. The white-faced daughter wanted to know, of course, all about it—they all want to know; but I didn't tell her—I lied! I said he had had heart failure, and that they had buried him at sea, and in a coffin like any other passenger, because we were only three days out; and I described the service and the roses, and how sorry the passengers were. She knows the truth now. He's told her.

"Go get your rose, old man. I ought to have had better sense than to rake it all up. No use in it. Not your side of the wall, not my side. Let me smell it. Yes, same perfume. Here, put it back in your button-hole."

With a Detailed Account of a Dangerous Footpad.

Mac had invited three or four of us to luncheon—Boggs, Lonnegan, Marny, and myself. These feasts were "Dutch" in the strictest sense, the sum total paid being divided, share and share alike, between the host of the day and his guests. That was the custom among the students in Munich and Paris, even at Florian's in Venice, and the custom was still observed. It did away with unpleasant comparisons—Lonnegan's inherited bank-account, for instance, and Woods's income from his rich aunt, who refused him nothing, in contrast to my own and Boggs's annual earnings. The only liberty given to the host of the day was the choice of restaurants. At Maroni's we could get a hot sandwich and a glass of beer for fifteen cents; at Brown's, in Twenty-eighth Street, a chop, a baked potato, and a mug of bass for half of a trade dollar. When some one of the less opulent had sold a picture, and had become temporarily rich over and above the amount due for the month's rent, Lonnegan, or Woods, or Pitkin (Pitkin had a father who could cut off coupons) selected Delmonico's. These occasions were rare, and ever afterward became historic.

This day, it being Mac's turn, he selected Oscar Pusch's, on Fourth Avenue—a modest little beer-house near the corner of Twenty-fourth Street, its only distinguishing mark being a swinging, double shutter door and the advertisement of a brewery in the window. Inside was a long bar drenched with the foam of countless mugs of Hofbrau, facing a line of tables centred by cheap castors and dishes of cold slaw, and flanked at one end by a back room. This last apartment was for the elect. One table was always reserved for the exalted; of this group MacWhirter was High Priest.

Here often at night Mac held forth to an admiring crowd of young painters who believed in his brush and who loved the man who wielded it. When I look back now down the vista of twenty years and see how fine and strong and superb that brush was, how true, how wonderful in color, how much better than any other painter of his time—Barbizon, London, or Dusseldorf—and think of how many lies the resident picture dealer told his patrons to discredit Mac's genius, I always experience a peculiar hotness under my collar-button. It cools off, it is true, whenever I see one of his masterpieces hung to-day on the walls of the redeemed. My anger then turns to a genial warmth, suffusing my cheeks and permeating my being, especially when I learn the sum paid for the smallest product of his brush.

"One of MacWhirter's, sir; one of his choicest; painted in his best period," says this same fraud to-day (the period, remember, when he would say, "What can one expect of the Hudson Rivery School, sir?"), and then the dealer demands a price which, had it been paid in Mac's earlier days, would have resulted in his breaking all students' rules and setting up Johannesburg of '41 instead of the simple steins of the Hofbrau with which Lonnegan, Boggs, and the rest of us were being regaled.

The hospitable and ever alert Oscar did not welcome us this time, but a new waiter, who sprang at Mac as if he had been his lost brother—a joyous sort of waiter, clean-shaven as a priest, ruddy-cheeked, blue-eyed, with short, tan-colored hair sticking straight up on his head, looking as if at some time in his life he had been frightened half out of his wits and had never been able to keep his hair down since.

The appearance of this overjoyed individual produced a peculiar effect on Mac.

"Oh, Mr. Pusch found a place for you at last, did he, Carl?" he burst out. "Glad you're here," and Mac stepped forward and shook the waiter's hand with more than his usual warmth.

Boggs looked at me and winked. What would Mac be doing next?

"Some member of the royal family, Mac?" asked Boggs, when the waiter had left the room to execute Mac's orders.

"No," said Mac, unfolding his napkin, "just plain man."

"I know," said Boggs, "ran off with a soprano at the Imperial Opera House; disinherited by his father; fought a duel with his Colonel on account of her; dismissed from his club; sought refuge in flight to God's free country, where for years he worked in a small café on Fourth Avenue. Was known for years as 'Carl' where——"

Mac raised his eyes at Boggs.

"Lively imagination you've got, Boggs. If I were you I——"

"On the death of his father, the late Baron Schweizerkase," continued Boggs in the nasal tone of an exhibitor of wax works, completely ignoring Mac's interruption, "the exile, who was none other than Prince Pumperknickel, returned to his estates, where his beautiful and accomplished wife, though not of royal blood, now dispenses the hospitality of his noble house with all the honors which——"

"Will you shut up, Boggs," cried Lonnegan. "Your tongue goes like an eight-day clock." Then he turned to Mac. "Seems to me I've seen that waiter before—last summer, if I remember. Where was it? Florian's or the Panthéon?"

"No, I don't think so," said Mac. "Carl hasn't been out of the country for two years to my knowledge. Much obliged, Oscar, for giving him a place." This to the proprietor, who was now beaming across the bar at Mac. "You'll find Carl all right," and he nodded toward the waiter, who was again approaching the table.

"Everything suit you, Carl?"

"Oh, yes, yes, Mr. MacWhirter; I was comin' to see you about it, but I just got back from Philadelphy." The man seemed hardly able to keep his arms from around Mac's neck. I've seen a dog sometimes show that peculiar form of trembling joy when brought suddenly into his master's presence after a long absence, but never a man.

Marny now spoke up.

"Tell us about this waiter, Mac."

"There's nothing to tell; just one of my acquaintances, that's all. Some I bow to, some I shake hands with—Carl is one of the last," and Mac nodded and emptied his glass at a single draught, shutting off all discussion. No one knew better than Mac how to avoid a subject on which he preferred to keep silence.

On the way back to the Old Building Marny and I walked together, Lonnegan, Mac, and Boggs behind.

"Something in that waiter Carl," remarked Marny, "or Mac wouldn't have shaken hands with him. These waiters are a queer lot; they're never in the same city more than a year. I drew my chair up to a table in Moscow two years ago in that swell café—forget the name—outside of a park, and sat me down, wondering which one of my ragged languages I could use in getting something to eat, when the waiter behind my chair leaned over and said in perfect English, 'What wine, Mr. Marny?' He'd waited at Brown's, on Twenty-eighth Street, for years. Hello! Who's Mac talking to?—a street beggar! Just like him!"

We were crossing the Square now and nearing the Old Building and No. 3. There was evidently some dispute over the beggar, for Mac was apparently defending the woman, while the others were objecting to her asking for alms.

"They've got a password and a signal-call for Mac," continued Boggs; "he never goes to luncheon but there's half a dozen of 'em strung along his route."

We had now reached our companions.

"Did you give that tramp anything, Mac?" burst out Marny.

"Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth, my boy," answered Mac, with a wave of his hand as he strode along.

"Did he, Lonnegan?" persisted Boggs.

"Yes, and wanted to know where she lived."

"I can tell you where she lives," exploded Boggs. "She lives in a brownstone front somewhere facing the Park. Drives up Riverside every Sunday in her carriage, and all because fools like you, Mac, support her. Only last week a man I know gave some pennies to a woman who was crying with hunger, with two little babes to feed—'For the love of God, kind sir!' and all that sort of thing—and that night, going home from the club, he found her on a doorstep under a gaslight counting out her earnings—all the cents in one pile, all the dimes in another; then the quarters, halves, and so on. She'd earned more money that day than he had. When she saw him she laughed, and went right on with her counting."

Mac was now entering the Building, we following him upstairs, the discussion still going on. Lonnegan insisted that there were city charities that took care of such tramps; Boggs interrupted that they ought to be turned over to the police. Marny thought that there might be some of them deserving, but the chances were that the greater part of them were too lazy to work.

Our heads were now level with the top of the Chinese screen, and the next instant the whole party were inside No. 3 and warming themselves at MacWhirter's wood fire.

Mac hung up his coat, threw some fresh logs on the andirons, swept up the hearth, and dragged up the chairs for his guests alongside of some of the other habitués—Charley Woods among them—who had already arrived and were awaiting our return.

"Mac's been doing the noble act again," Boggs burst out; "that's why we're late. Shook hands with a red-headed waiter named Carl down at Pusch's, who seemed glad enough to eat him up; then he emptied his pockets to a bag of bones outside with a basket—'God knows I haven't eaten anything, kind sir, for three days. Got three children' (Boggs's drawl was inimitable). You know that kind of hag. He would have invited her to dinner if we hadn't been along. If he wasn't a natural born fool with his money it might do Mac some good to prove to him that——"

"You will get left every time, Mac," interrupted Woods from his chair, "over this foolishness of yours." It was never considered rude to interrupt Boggs—not even by Boggs. "Half of these beggars are dead beats. I've had some experience."

"Never 'left' when you're right, Woods," shouted back Mac, who had crossed the room to his basin and was busy washing his brushes.

"It's never 'right,' Mac, to allow yourself to be buncoed; and that's what happened to me last fall," retorted Woods.

Boggs leaned forward in his chair and fixed his eyes on Woods. The buncoing of Charles Wood, Esquire—a man who prided himself on knowing everything—was a story so delicious that not a word of it must be lost. The other men were of the same opinion, for they drew their chairs closer to the blaze, particularly those who had just come out of the keen wind in crossing the Square.

"You don't know, of course, for I have never told you," Woods continued, when every one was settled comfortably; "but when I was real pious—and I was once—I used to oblige my dear old aunt and go down to the Bowery and read to the tramps that were hived in a room rented by the church to which she belonged. I would give them short stories—touch of pathos, broad farce, or dramatic incident, whatever I thought would suit them best—from 'Charles O'Malley,' 'Boots at Holly Tree Inn,' and Hans Breitmann's yarns. I got along pretty well with the Irish, Dutch, and English dialects, but a new story just out at that time, 'That Lass o' Lowrie's,' in the Lancashire dialect, upset me completely. I didn't know how to read it properly, and I couldn't find anyone who could teach me. I tried it there one night, and after making a first-class fizzle of it I suddenly thought that in an audience representing almost every nationality on the globe there might be someone from Lancashire, and so I stepped again to the edge of the platform, told them why I made the inquiry, and invited anyone from that part of England to stand up so that I could see and talk to him. Nobody moved, and I went away determined never to read the story again.

"The next day I was pegging away at my easel—it was when I had my studio over Duncan's grocery store on Fourteenth Street and Union Square, next to Quartley's and Sheldon's rooms—you remember it—when there came a rap at the door, and there stood a young fellow about twenty-five years of age, dressed in a shabby suit of once good clothes. Not a tramp; rather a good-looking, well-mannered man, who had evidently seen better days. I believe that you can always tell when a man has been a gentleman; there is something about the cut of his jib that indicates his blood, no matter how low he may have fallen; something in the quality of his skin, the lines about his nose and the way it is fastened to his face; the way the hair grows on his temples, and its fineness; the rise of the forehead; and the ears—especially the ears—small, well-modelled ears are as true an indication of gentle blood as small, well-turned hands and feet. I have painted too many portraits not to have found this out. This fellow had all these marks.

Not a tramp; rather a good-looking, well-mannered man, who had evidently seen better days.

"He had, moreover, a way of looking you right in the eye without flinching, following yours about like a searchlight without letting go of his hold. His voice, too, was the voice of a man of some refinement—a reed-like voice, like a clarionette, well-modulated, even musical at times, and with an intonation and accent which showed me at once that he was an Englishman.

"'I heard what you said last night about the Lancashire dialect,' he began, 'but I didn't like to stand up to speak to you. I was afraid you might not be satisfied with what I could do for you. But I am in such straits to-day that I couldn't help coming, and so I asked the Superintendent for your address. I don't want any money, but I must have some food; if you will help me you will do a kind act. I am out of money, and I may never get any more from home, so that what you do for me I may not be able to repay. I haven't really had much to eat for nearly a week and my strength is giving out. I could hardly get up your stairs.'

"All this, remember, without giving me a chance to ask him a single question and without stopping to take breath—just as a book agent rattles on—he standing all the time on my door-sill, his hat in his hand, not as a beggar would carry it, but as some well-bred friend who had dropped in for an afternoon call. Good deal in the way a man holds his hat, let me tell you, when you are sizing a stranger up. That's another one of my beliefs.

"I had brought him inside now and he was standing under my skylight, his face and figure making an even better impression on me than when he was in the dark of the doorway.

"'And you speak the Lancashire dialect, of course?' I asked, my eyes now taking in the military curl of his mustache, his broad shoulders and the way his really fine head was set upon them.

"'No,' he answered; 'to tell you the truth, I do not—not to be of any service to you. I know some words, of course, but not many. I ought to be able to speak it perfectly, for my father's place is in the next county; but I have been a good deal away from home. I didn't come for that; I came because you seemed to me last night to be the sort of a man I could talk to; I meet very few of them; I don't like to stop people in the street, and my clothes now are not fit to enter anyone's office, and it would do no good if I did, for I know no one here.'

"'Where have you lived?' I asked.

"'Oh, all over; Australia part of the time, three years in Canada——'

"'You don't look over twenty-five.'

"He dropped his eyes now and looked down at the floor.

"'I wish I was,' he answered slowly; 'I might have done differently. You are wrong, I am thirty-one—will be my next birthday. I was home last summer to see my father, but I only stayed an hour with him. He wouldn't talk to me, so I left and came here.'

"'Why not?'

"'Well, I'd rather not go into that; it's a family matter.'

"'Pretty rough, turning you out, wasn't it?' I was getting interested in him now.

"'No, I can't say that it was. I hadn't been square with him—not the year before.'

"'Well, you were ready to do the decent thing then, I hope?'

"'Yes, but my Governor is a peculiar sort of man that don't forget easily. But he's my father all the same, and so I'd rather keep away than have him hate me. No—please don't ask me anything about it. I don't think he was quite fair, but I'm not going to say so.'

"I had him in a chair now and had laid down my palette and brushes. When a man is thrown out into the world by his father and then refuses to abuse him, or let anybody else do so, there's something inside of him that you can build on.

"I handed him a greenback. 'Go down,' I said, 'on Sixth Avenue and get something to eat and anything else you need for your comfort, and then come back to me.'

"He folded the bill up carefully, put it in his waistcoat pocket, thanked me in a simple, straightforward way, just as any of you would have done had I loaned you an equal amount to tide you over some temporary emergency, and with the bow of a thoroughbred closed my door behind him and went downstairs.

"While he was gone I began unconsciously to let my imagination loose on him. I immediately invested him with all the attributes I had failed to discover in him while he stood hat in hand under my skylight. Some young blood, no doubt, of good family, I said to myself; ran through his allowance, shipped off to Australia, returns and is forgiven. Then more debts, more escapades. Father a choleric old Britisher, who gets purple in the face when he is angry—'Out you go, you dog; never more shall you be son of mine!" You remember George Holland as an irate father of the old school?—same kind of an old sardine. No question, though, but that his son was in hard lines and on the verge of suicide or, what was worse, crime.

"What, then, was my duty under the circumstances? What would my own Governor think of a man who had found me in a similar strait in London, penniless, half-clothed, and hungry, and who had turned me out again into the cold?

"Before I had decided what to do he was back again in my studio looking like a different man. Not only had he been fed, but he was clean-shaven and clean-collared.

"'I took you at your word,' he said. 'I had a bath and bought me a clean collar. Here is the change,' and he handed me back some silver. 'I don't want to promise anything I can't do, and I don't say I'll pay it back, for I may not be able to, but I'll try my best to do so. Good-by, and thank you again.'

"'Hold on,' I said. 'Sit down, and let me talk to you.' Now right here, gentlemen, I want to tell you"—Woods swept his eye around the circle as he spoke, then rose to his feet as if to give greater emphasis to what he was about to say, his round bullet-head, eye-glasses, and immaculate shirt collar glistening in the overhead light—"I want to tell you right here that the buying of that clean collar and the return of the change settled the matter for me. I'm a student of human nature, as most of you know, and I have certain fixed rules to guide me which never fail. My duty was clear; I would play the Good Samaritan for all I was worth. I wouldn't cross over and ask him how the cripple was getting on; I'd walk down both sides of the street, call an ambulance, lift him in to a down-covered cot run on C springs, and trundle him off to flowery beds of ease or whatever else I could scrape up that was comforting. Now listen—and, Mac, I want you to take all this in, for I am telling this yarn for your special benefit.

"That same afternoon I took him up to my rooms—I was living with my aunt then up on Murray Hill—opened up my wardrobe, pulled out a shirt, underwear, socks, shoes, cut-away coat, waistcoat, and trousers; gave him a scarf, and then to add a touch to his whole get-up I picked a scarf-pin from my cushion and stuck it in myself. Next I handed him a cigar, opened up a bottle of Scotch, and after dinner—my aunt was dining out, and we had the table to ourselves—sat up with him till near midnight, he and I talking together like any other two men who had met for the first time and who had, to their delight, found something in common.

"Nor would any of you have known the difference had you happened to drop in upon us. No reference, of course, was made to his condition or to the way in which we had met. He was clean, well-dressed, well-mannered, perfectly at ease, and entirely at home. You could see that by the way in which he shadowed his wine-glass as a sign to the waiter not to refill it; passed the end of his cigar toward me that I might snip it with the cutter attached to my watch-chain, having none of his own, of course—a fact he made no comment upon; did everything, in fact, down to the smallest detail (and I watched and studied him pretty closely) that any one of you would have done under similar circumstances; all of which proved his birth and breeding, and all of which, you will admit, no man not born to it can acquire and not be detected by one who knows.

"My idea was—and this is another one of my theories—that you can restore a man's energies only when you restore his self-respect, and I intended to prove my theory on this Englishman. What I was after was first to bring him back to his old self—he taking his place where he belonged, shutting out the hideous nightmare that was pursuing him—and then get him a situation where he could be self-sustaining. This done, I proposed to write to his father and patch it up somehow between them, and the next time I went abroad we would go together and kill the fatted calf, haul in the Yule log, summon the tenants, build triumphal arches, and all that sort of thing.

"The following morning promptly at ten o'clock he rapped at my studio door. Pitkin saw him and thought he had come to buy out the studio, he was so well dressed—you remember him, Pit?"

Pitkin shook his head and smiled.

"Then commenced the hunt for work, and I tell you it was hard sledding; but I stuck at it, and at the end of the week old Porterfield gave him a position as entry clerk in his foreign department. During all that week he was spending his time between my studio and my aunt's, I looking after his expenditures—not much, only a few dollars a day. Every evening we dined at home, and every evening we roamed the world: mountain climbing, pig sticking, pheasant shooting in Devonshire; who won the Derby, and why; English politics, English art, the tariff—every topic under the sun that I knew anything about and a lot I didn't, he leading or following in the talk, his eyes fixed on mine, his rich, musical voice filling the room, his handsome, well-bred body comfortably seated in my aunt's easiest chair.

"And now comes the most interesting part of this story. The afternoon before he was to present himself at Porterfield's, about five o'clock—an hour before I reached home—he rang my aunt's front-door bell; told the servant that I had been called suddenly out of town for the night and had sent him post haste in a cab for my portmanteau and overcoat. Then he tripped upstairs to my apartment, waited beside the servant until she had stowed away in my best Gladstone my dress-suit, shirt with its links and pearl studs, collars—everything, even to my patent-leather shoes; and then, while she was out of the room in search of my overcoat, emptied into his pockets all my scarf-pins, my silver brandy-flask, and a lot of knick-knacks on my bureau, took the coat on his arm, preceded her leisurely downstairs, she carrying the bag, stepped into the cab, and I haven't seen him since!"

"There, Mac, that yarn is told for your especial benefit. What do you think of it?"

"I think you're all white, Woods, and I'm glad to know you," cried Mac as he grasped the painter's hand and shook it warmly.

"Yes, but what do you think of that cur of an Englishman?"

"I think he'll live to see the day he'll regret the mean trick he played you," answered Mac; "but that doesn't prove your contention that all beggars are frauds."

"Did you try to catch him?" interrupted Boggs.

"No, I was too hurt. I didn't mind the money or the clothes. What I minded was the way in which I had squandered my personality. The only thing I did do was to tell Captain Alec Williams of our precinct about him.

"'Smooth-talking fellow?' Williams asked; 'had a scrap with his father? Light-blue eyes and a little turned-up mustache? Yes, I know him—slickest con' man in the business. We've got his mug in our collection; show it to you some day, if you come;' and he did."

"And the great reader of human nature didn't go to London and build arches and kill the fatted calf, after all," remarked Lonnegan, with a wink at Boggs.

"No," retorted Boggs; "he could have suicided himself at home with less trouble."

"Laugh on, you can't hurt me! I'm immune," said Woods. "I learned my lesson that time, and I've graduated. I'm not practising any theories, old or new; I'm doing missionary work instead, pointing out and running down dead beats wherever I see them. No more men's night meetings for me, no more widows with twins—no nothing. When I've got anything to give I hand it to my aunt. It isn't a pleasant yarn—it's one on me every time. I only told it to Mac so he could save his money."

"I'm saving it, Woods—save it every day; got a lot of small banks all over the place that pay me compound interest. Now I'll tell you a yarn, and I want you fellows to listen and keep still till I get through. If there's any doubts, Boggs, of your releasing your grasp on your talking machine, I'll take your remarks now. All right, enough said. Now hand me that tobacco, Lonnegan, and one of you fellows move back so I can get up closer, where you can all hear. This story, remember, Woods, is for you."

When Mac talks we listen. The story, whatever it may be, always comes straight from his heart.

"One cold, snowy night—so cold, I remember, that I had to turn up my coat collar and stuff my handkerchief inside to keep out the driving sleet—I turned into Tenth Street out of Fifth Avenue on my way here. It was after midnight—nearly one o'clock, in fact—and with the exception of the policeman on our beat—and I had met him on the corner of the Avenue—I had not passed a single soul since I had left the club. When I got abreast of the long iron railing I caught sight of the figure of a man standing under the gaslight. He wore a long ulster, almost to his feet, and a slouch hat. At sound of my footsteps he shrank back out of the light and crouched close to the steps of one of those old houses this side of the long wall. His movements did not interest me; waiting for somebody, I concluded, and doesn't want to be seen. Then the thought crossed my mind that it was a bad night to be out in, and that perhaps he might be suffering or drunk, a conclusion I at once abandoned when I remembered how warmly he was clad and how quickly he had sprung into the shadow of the steps when he heard my approach—all this, of course, as I was walking toward him. That I was in any danger of being robbed never crossed my mind. I never go armed, and never think of such things. It's the fellow who sees first who escapes, and up to this time I had watched his every move.

"When I got abreast of the steps he rose on his feet with a quick spring and stood before me.

"'I'm hungry,' he said in a low, grating voice. 'Give me some money; I don't mean to hurt you, but give me some money, quick!'

"I threw up my hands to defend myself and backed to the lamp-post so that I could see where to hit him best, trying all the time to get a view of his face, which he still kept concealed by the brim of his slouch hat.

"'That's not the way to ask for it,' I answered. I would have struck him then only for the tones of his voice, which seemed to carry a note of suffering which left me irresolute.

"He was edging nearer and nearer, with the movement of a prize-fighter trying to get in a telling blow, his long overcoat concealing the movements of his legs as thoroughly as his slouch hat did the features of his face. Two thoughts now flashed through my mind: Should I shout for the policeman, who could not yet be out of hearing, or should I land a blow under his chin and tumble him into the gutter.

"All this time he was muttering to himself: 'I'm crazy, I know, but I'm starving; nobody listens to me. This man's got to listen to me or I'll kill him and take it away from him.'

"I had gathered myself together and was about to let drive when he grabbed me around the waist; we both slipped on the ice and fell to the pavement, he underneath and I on top. I had my knee on his chest now, and was trying to get my fingers into his shirt collar to choke the breath out of him, when the buttons on his ulster gave way. I let go my hold and sprang up. The man was naked to his shoes, except for a pair of ragged cotton drawers!

"'Don't kill me,' he cried, 'don't kill me.' He was sobbing now, hat off, his face in the snow, all the fight out of him.

"I know a hungry man when I see him; been famished myself, wolfish and desperate once—and this man was hungry.

"'Put on your hat, button up your coat,' I said, 'and come with me.'"

"Bully for you, Mac; that's the kind of talk," cried Boggs. "Waltzed him right down to the police station, didn't you?"

"No, I brought him to this very room, sat him down in that very chair where you sit, Boggs," answered Mac, "and before this very fire. He followed me like a homeless dog that you meet in the street, never speaking, keeping a few steps behind; waited until I had unlocked the street door, held it back for me to pass through; mounted the flight of steps behind me—the light is out, as you know, at that hour, and I had to scratch a match to find my way; remained motionless inside this room until I had turned on the gas, when I found him standing by that screen over there, a dazed expression on his face—like a man who had fallen overboard and been picked up by a passing ship.

"He had been discharged from his last place because some drunken young men had lost their money in a bar-room and had accused him of taking it. For some weeks he had slept in a ten-cent lodging-house. Two days before someone had stolen his clothes, all but his overcoat, which was over him. Since that time he had been walking around half-naked.

"'Pull that coat off,' I said, 'and put on these,' and I handed him some underwear and a suit of sketching clothes that hung in my closet. 'And now drink this,' and I poured out a spoonful of whiskey—all he needed on an empty stomach.

"When he was warm and dry—this did not take many minutes—we started downstairs again and over to Sixth Avenue. Jerry's screens and blinds were shut, but his lights were still burning; some fellows were having a game of poker in the back room.

"'Got anything to eat, Jerry?' I asked.

"'Yes, Mr. MacWhirter; a cold ham and some hot chowder, if they ain't turned off the steam. Pretty good chowder, too, this week. What'll it be—for one or two?'

"'For one, Jerry.'

"I left him alone for a while sitting at one of Jerry's tables, his hungry, eager eyes watching every movement of the old man, as a starved cat watches the bowl of milk you are about to place before it.

"When he had devoured everything Jerry had given him, I moved to the bar, poured out half a glass of whiskey from one of Jerry's bottles, waited until he had swallowed it, and then sent him upstairs to sleep in one of Jerry's beds."

"And that was the last you ever saw of him, of course," broke out Woods, with a laugh.

"No; saw him every day for a month, till he got work. Saw him again to-day at Pusch's. He waited on us. It was Carl."

In which Boggs Becomes Dramatic and Relates a Tale of Blood.

Mr. Alexander Macwhirter's great picture, "Early Morning on the East River," was still on his easel. The Hanging Committee had taken the outside measurement of the frame; had hung the other pictures up to the line of this measurement; had inserted the title and price in the official catalogue, and were then awaiting Mac's finishing touches.

MacWhirter had struck a snag in the middle distance, and until this was repainted to his satisfaction the picture would not leave his studio, official catalogue or no official catalogue.

On this afternoon Lonnegan was the first to arrive. The great architect on his way downtown must have dropped in upon some social function, or was about to attend one later in the day, for he wore his morning frock-coat, white waistcoat, and a decoration in his button-hole—an unusual attire for Lonnegan unless the affair was of more than customary brilliancy and importance.

"Let up, Mac," cried Lonnegan from behind the Chinese screen, as he looked over its top; "the light's gone and you can't see what you're doing."

"I've got light enough to see where to put my foot," Mac shouted back.

"Easy, easy, old man! Don't smash it; masterpieces are rare! Let me have a look at it. Why, it's all right! What's the matter with it?"

"Shadow tones under the cliffs all out of key. There are a lot of wharves, sheds, and vessels lying there half-smothered in mist. I do not want to do more than suggest them, but they've got to be right."

"Well, but you can't see to paint any longer. Give it up until morning."

"Haven't got time! Hanging Committee has sent here three times to-day."

Marny, Pitkin, Boggs, and Woods walked in and joined the group about Mac's easel, a "sick picture" (pictures get ill and die, or recover and become famous, as well as men) being a matter of the very first importance.

Each new arrival had some advice to offer. Pitkin thought the sky reflections were not silvery enough. Woods wanted a touch of red somewhere on the sides or sterns of the boats, with a "click" of high light on their decks to relieve them from the haze of the background. "Right out of the tube, old man, and don't touch it afterward. It'll make it sing!" Boggs ignored all suggestions by saying, in a dictatorial tone:

"Don't you do anything of the kind, Mac; you don't want any drops of red sealing wax spilt on that middle distance, or any blobs of white; only make it worse. All you need is a touch here and there of yellow-white against that purple haze. But you don't want to guess at it. This East River is a fact, not a dream. And it's right here under our eyes. Everybody knows it and everybody knows how it looks. If you want it true, the best thing for you to do is to go there to-morrow morning at daylight and wait until the sun gets to your angle. You fellows that insist on painting things out of your heads instead of following what is set down before you will run to seed like cabbages. Why you want to scoop up the emptyings of everybody's wash-basins, when it is so easy to get buckets of pure water fresh from nature's well, is what gets me."

"Talks like an art critic," growled Pitkin.

"And with as little sense," added Woods.

"More like a plumber, I should think," remarked Lonnegan drily. "Only don't you go up on that hill at five o'clock in the morning, Mac, or you'll never finish that picture or anything else. Some thug will finish you. That's the worst hole on the river—regular den of thieves live under that hill. I came near being murdered there myself once."

Lonnegan's statement caused a sensation.

"You came near being murdered, you dear Lonny?" Mac asked nervously.

"Yes."

"When?"

"Some three years ago."

Boggs, who was still smarting under the contempt with which his suggestion had been received, now shouted in the voice of a newsboy selling an afternoon edition:

"Full and graphic account of the hair-breadth escape of a great architect. Sit down, gentlemen, and listen to a tale that will clog your veins with dynamite and make goose shivers go up and down your spine. Here, Lonnegan, rest your immaculately upholstered body in this chair and tell us all about it. Put up your brushes, Mac; I'll help you wash 'em. Everybody draw up to the fire." (Here Boggs dropped into his own chair.) "The modern Moses is going to tell us how he was pulled out of the bulrushes and why he has an excuse for still walking around among his fellow-men instead of being tucked away in some comfortable cemetery on a hill under a mausoleum of his own designing.

"Ladies and gentlemen"—Boggs was again on his feet, a ring in his voice like that of a showman—"it is my especial privilege, and one of the greatest honors of my life, to introduce to you this afternoon the distinguished architect, Mr. Archibald Perkins Lonnegan, who——"

"Will you keep still!" cried Pitkin, putting both hands on Boggs's shoulder and forcing him into his chair. "Sit on him, Marny!"

Mac by this time had laid his palette on his painting table and had moved to the fire.

"You never told me anything about that, Lonny."

"Well, don't know that I did; 'twas some time ago."

"You're sure that you aren't really murdered, me long-lost che-ild?" whined Boggs in an anxious tone; these changes of manner, tone, and gesture of the Chronic Interrupter,—imitating in one sentence the newsboy, in another the showman, and now the anxious mother—were as much a part of his personality, and as much enjoyed by the coterie, despite their constant protests, as the bubbling good nature which inspired them.

"Feel that," said Lonnegan, tapping his biceps as he frowned at Boggs, "and you'll find out how much of a corpse I am."

Boggs' plump fingers squeezed the corded muscles of the speaker with the dexterity of a surgeon hunting for broken bones. Then he cast his eyes heavenward.

"Saved by a miracle, gentlemen. Thank God, he is still spared to us! Now go on, you fashion-plate! When, where, and in what part of your valuable and talented person were you almost murdered?"

Everybody was now seated and had his pipe filled, all except Lonnegan, who stood on the rug with his slender, well-built and, to-day, well-dressed body in silhouette against the blazing logs, his shapely legs forming an inverted V.

"This isn't much of a story. I wouldn't tell it at all if it wasn't to save Mac's life. There are two or three places under that East River hill where it is unsafe to walk even in broad daylight, let alone in the gray of the morning. When I tried it I was looking for one of my foremen—or, rather, for one of his derrick-men. I knew the street, but I didn't know the number. After dinner I started up Third Avenue, turned to Avenue A, and found that my only way to reach the place was down a long street leading to the river, flanked on each side by barren lots used as dumping-grounds and dotted here and there with squatters' shanties built of refuse timber, old tin roofs, and junk; gas lamps a block apart, with the sidewalks flagged only in the centre.

"I went myself because I wanted the derrick-man, and I wanted him at seven o'clock on Monday morning, and I knew he'd come if I could see him.

"Half-way down this long street, say two blocks from the avenue, which was brilliantly lighted and thronged with people—it was Saturday night—I saw the lights of a bar-room, the only brick building fronting either side of the walk."

"Were you rigged out in this royal apparel, Lonny?" broke in Boggs.

"No; I was in a dress-suit and wore an overcoat. Without thinking of the danger, I stepped inside and walked up to the barkeeper—a villainous-looking cutthroat, in his shirt sleeves.

"'I am looking for a man by the name of Dennis McGrath,' I said; 'I thought some of you men might know him.'

"The fellow looked me all over, and then he called to two men sitting at the table behind the stove. As he spoke I caught the flash of a wink quivering on his eyelid—the lid farthest from me. Nothing uncovers the workings of a man's brain like a carefully concealed wink. It may mean anything from ridicule to murder.

"One of the men winked at got up from a table and approached the bar, followed by a larger man, with a face like a bull terrier.

"'What yer say his name is—McGrath?'

"All this time his eyes were sizing me up, scrutinizing my hat, my shirt-studs, watch-chain, overcoat, gloves, down to my shoes. The smaller man—'Shorty,' the barkeeper called him—now repeated the larger man's question.

"'Did yer say his name's McGrath? What's he do?'

"'He is a derrick-man.'

"Shorty was now well under the light of the bar. He had a scar over one damaged eye and a flattened nose, the same blow having evidently wrecked both; over the other was pulled a black cloth cap; around his throat was a dirty red handkerchief, no collar showing—a capital make-up for a stage villain, I thought, as I looked him over, especially the handkerchief. Even Mac here would look like a burglar with his hair mussed, collar off, and a red handkerchief tied around his throat.

"The barkeeper piped up again: 'Get a move on, Shorty, and help the gent find the Mick.'

"'Shure! I know him. He's a-livin' under de rocks. Come 'long, Boss. I'll git him.'

"Two more men stepped out of the gloom; one, in a cap and yellow overcoat, went behind the bar and slipped something into his pocket; then the two lounged out of the room and shut the door behind them. I began to take in the situation. The purpose of the wink was clear now. I was in a dive in a deserted street, unarmed and alone, and surrounded by cutthroats. If I tried to find McGrath with any one of these men as a guide I would be robbed and thrown over the cliff; if I attempted to go back I would land in the clutches of the man in the yellow overcoat and his companion. All this time the barkeeper was leaning over the bar, his eyes fixed on my face. My only hope lay in a bold front.

"'All right,' I said to Shorty; 'how far is it?'

"'Oh, not very fur—'bout t'ree blocks.'

"I stepped out into the night.

"Down the long street on the way to the river stood three men—the man in the yellow overcoat, his companion, and one other. They separated when they saw me, the one in the overcoat retracing his steps toward the dive without looking my way, the others sauntering on ahead. I walked on, meditating what to do next. I could throttle Shorty and take to my heels, but then I would have to reckon with the pickets who might be between me and the bar-room.

"Sometimes, when in great danger, a sudden inspiration comes to a man; mine came out of a clear sky.

"'Hold on,' I said to Shorty—we were now half a block from the dive. 'Wait a minute; I have nothing smaller than a ten-dollar bill, and I want to give you something for your trouble. I'll run back and get the barkeeper to change it. Stay where you are; I won't be a minute.'

"I turned on my heel and walked back toward the dive with a quick step, as if I had forgotten something. The man with the yellow overcoat saw me coming and stepped into the street as if to intercept me. Shorty gave two low whistles, and the man stepped back to the sidewalk again. I reached the doorstep of the dive. All the men were now between me and the river, the one in the yellow overcoat but a short distance from the bar-room, Shorty waiting for me where I left him. With the same hurried movement I swung back the door, stepped inside, stripped off my overcoat, folded it close, threw it over my arm, and, before the barkeeper could realize what I was doing, pulled my hat close down to my ears, jerked the lapels of my dress-coat over my shirt-front to hide the white bosom, dashed out of the door and sprang for the middle of the street."

Here Lonnegan stopped and puffed away at his pipe. For a minute every man kept still.

"Go on, Lonny," said Mac, the intensity of his interest apparent in the tones of his voice.

"That's all," said Lonnegan. "The change of coats and slight disguise of hat and lapels threw them off their guard. The outside pickets thought, when I burst through the door, that I was somebody else until I was too far away to be overtaken. That's what saved my life."