immediately after his return to the apartment,
when--Caroline having gone to her own room to remove her wraps--he and
the butler were alone, he characteristically unburdened his mind.

"Mr. Warren, sir," said Edwards, "a young gentleman left a note here for
you this afternoon. The elevator man gave it to me, sir. It's on your
dressing table, sir."

The captain's answer had nothing whatever to do with the note. He had
been thinking of other things.

"Commodore," he said, "I've got the answer."

"To the note? Already, sir? I didn't know you'd seen it."

"I ain't. I've got the answer to the conundrum. It's Mother!"

"Mother, sir? I--I don't know what you mean."

"I do. The answer's Mother. Sonny don't count, though he may think he
does. But Mother's the whole team and the dog under the wagon. And,
Commodore, we've got to trot some if we want to keep ahead of that team!
Don't you forget it!"

He went to his room, leaving the bewildered butler to retire to the
kitchen, where he informed the cook that the old man was off his head
worse than common to-night.

"Blessed if he don't think he's a trotting horse!" said Edwards.

CHAPTER XI

The note on the dining room table proved, to the captain's delight, to
be from James Pearson. It was brief and to the point.

"Why don't you come and see me?" wrote the young man. "I've been
expecting you, and you promised to come. Have you forgotten my address?
If so, here it is. I expect to be in all day to-morrow."

The consequence of this was that eleven o'clock the next day found
Captain Elisha pulling the bell at a brick house in a long brick block
on a West Side street. The block had evidently been, in its time, the
homes of well-to-do people, but now it was rather dingy and gone to
seed. Across the street the first floors were, for the most part, small
shops, and in the windows above them doctors' signs alternated with
those of modistes, manicure artists, and milliners.

The captain had come a roundabout way, stopping in at the Moriarty
flat, where he found Mrs. Moriarty in a curious state of woe and tearful
pride. "Oh, what will I do, sir?" she moaned. "When I think he's gone,
it seems as if I'd die, too. But, thanks to you and Miss Warren--Mary
make it up to her!--my Pat'll have the finest funeral since the Guinny
saloon man was buried. Ah, if he could have lived to see it, he'd have
died content!"

The pull at the boarding-house bell was answered by a rather