y."

So he took his hat from behind the door and his stick from beside the
bed and went out into the evening.

He had been engaged to Miss Nora MacMahon for two ecstatic months, and
held the opinion that the earth and the heavens were aware of the
intensity of his passion, and applauded the unique justice of his
choice.

By day he sat humbly in a solicitor's office, or scurried through the
thousand offices of the Four Courts, but with night came freedom, and
he felt himself to be of the kindred of the gods and marched in pomp.
By what subterranean workings had he become familiar with the lady?
Suffice it that the impossible is possible to a lover. Everything can
be achieved in time. The man who wishes to put a mountain in his
pocket can do so if his pocket and his wish be of the requisite
magnitude.

Now the lady towards whom the raging torrent of his affections had been
directed was the daughter of his employer, and this, while it notated
romance, pointed also to tragedy. Further, while this fact was well
within his knowledge, it was far from the cognizance of the lady. He
would have enlightened her on the point, but the longer he delayed the
revelation, the more difficult did it become. Perpetually his tongue
ached to utter the truth. When he might be squeezing her hand or
plunging his glance into the depths of her eyes, consciousness would
touch him on the shoulder with a bony hand and say, "That is the boss's
daughter you are hugging"--a reminder which was provocative sometimes
of an almost unholy delight, when to sing and dance and go mad was but
natural; but at other times it brought with it moods of woe, abysses of
blackness.

In the solitude of the room wherein he lodged he sometimes indulged in
a small drama, wherein, as the hero, he would smile a slightly sad and
quizzical smile, and say gently, "Child, you are Mr. MacMahon's
daughter, I am but his clerk"--here the smile became more sadly
quizzical--"how can I ask you to forsake the luxury of a residence in
Clontarf for the uncongenial, nay, bleak surroundings of a South
Circular Road habitation?" And she, ah me! She vowed that a hut and a
crust and the love of her heart. . .! No matter!

So, nightly, Aloysius Murphy took the tram to Clontarf, and there,
wide-coated and sombreroed like a mediaeval conspirator, he trod
delicately beside his cloaked and hooded inamorata, whispering of the
spice of the wind and the great stretches of the sea.

Now a lov