Well, I thought his name was known clear across the country. It's been
in the papers often enough."

"What for?"

"Well," the miner lowered his voice--"over the affairs."

"What affairs?"

"Good Lord, mister! you are queer, if I must say it without offense.
There's only one set of affairs that you'll hear of in these parts, and
that's the affairs of the Scowrers."

"Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A gang of
murderers, are they not?"

"Hush, on your life!" cried the miner, standing still in alarm, and
gazing in amazement at his companion. "Man, you won't live long in
these parts if you speak in the open street like that. Many a man has
had the life beaten out of him for less."

"Well, I know nothing about them. It's only what I have read."

"And I'm not saying that you have not read the truth." The man looked
nervously round him as he spoke, peering into the shadows as if he
feared to see some lurking danger. "If killing is murder, then God
knows there is murder and to spare. But don't you dare to breathe the
name of Jack McGinty in connection with it, stranger; for every whisper
goes back to him, and he is not one that is likely to let it pass. Now,
that's the house you're after, that one standing back from the street.
You'll find old Jacob Shafter that runs it as honest a man as lives in
this township."

"I thank you," said McMurdo, and shaking hands with his new
acquaintance he plodded, gripsack in hand, up the path which led to the
dwelling house, at the door of which he gave a resounding knock.

It was opened at once by someone very different from what he had
expected. It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful. She was of
the German type, blonde and fair-haired, with the piquant contrast of a
pair of beautiful dark eyes with which she surveyed the stranger with
surprise and a pleasing embarrassment which brought a wave of colour
over her pale face. Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it
seemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; the
more attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy
surroundings. A lovely violet growing upon one of those black
slag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising. So
entranced was he that he stood staring without a word, and it was she
who broke the silence.

"I thought it was father," said she with a pleasing little touch of a
German accent. "Did you come to see him? He is downtown. I expec