ng and whustle beautiful,
whilst he was a-carvin' of it."

Rainsford looked at a small design pinned against the wall: he
considered it long.

"Do ye think that he's kilt then?" asked the Irish woman.

The paymaster returned briskly. "No, I don't think so. I hope he has not
come to any harm."

"His readin' buks, sor," she said, "wud ye cast an eye?"

But here Rainsford refused, and returning to his own lodgings higher up
in the town, and on a better scale, went home thoughtful, touched, and
with a feeling of kinship with the truant engineer. Before, however, he
could take any steps to look for Fairfax, a coloured man from somewhere
appeared with the request that Mrs. Kenny send all Fairfax's things. The
mysterious lodger enclosed, moreover, a week's board in advance, but no
address; nor had the coloured man any information for Nut Street, and a
decided antipathy existed between George Washington and Mary Kenny. She
was pale when she packed up Fairfax's belongings and cried into his
trunk, as she laid the drawing of Bella Carew next to the unopened
packet of his mother's treasures. She was unconscious of what sacred
thing she touched, but she was cut to the heart, as was poor Falutini.
Peter Rainsford, who had not gone far in his friendship with the elusive
Fairfax, was only disappointed.

* * * * *

At the close of the following Sunday afternoon, Rainsford was reading in
his room when Fairfax himself came in.

"Why, hello, Fairfax," the paymaster's tone was not that of a
disaffected patron to a delinquent engineer. "You are just two weeks
late in reporting Number Twenty-four. But I'm sincerely glad you came,
whatever the reason for the delay."

Rainsford's greeting was that of a friend to a friend. Fairfax,
surprised, lifted his eyebrows and smiled "thanks." He took the chair
Rainsford offered. "Why _thank_ you, Rainsford." He took a cigar which
Rainsford handed him. He was in the dress of a railroad man off duty.

"Now I don't know anybody I've been more curious about," said the
paymaster. "Where on earth did you go to, Fairfax? You don't know how
you have mystified us all here, and in fact, me from the first."

"There are no end of mysteries in life," said the young man, still
smiling; "I should have wondered about you, Mr. Rainsford, if I had had
either the time or the courage!"

"Courage, Fairfax?"

"Why yes," returned the engineer, twisting his cigar between his
finge