and narrow path. He preached, and very eloquently, the gospel of
common-sense. For every crisis in people's lives, he seemed to remember
a parallel. And his knowledge, especially of criminalities and the
workings of crooked minds, seemed very marvellous to those who sought
him out. And he was an easy man to speak truth to, for there were very
few wicked things that he had not done himself. It is easier to confess
theft to a thief than to a man of virtue, and the resulting advice may
very well be just the same.

His energy and activity were endless. "It's just as hard work," he told
Rose, "to do good in the world as to do evil. I haven't changed my
methods, only my conditions and ideals. You've got to get the confidence
of the people you're working for, and to get that you've got to know
more about them than they know about themselves. To know that a man has
murdered, gives you power over that man; to know that another man has
done something fine and manly, gives you a hold on that man. Real men
are ashamed of having two things found out about them--their secret bad
actions, and their secret good actions. Men who do good for the sake of
notoriety aren't real men."

"I know who's a real man," said Rose.

He regarded her with much tenderness and amusement. "Rose," he said,
"there's one thing I'm keen to know."

"What?"

"Will you give an honest answer?"

She nodded.

"Well then, do you like me as much as you did when I used to maltreat
you and bully you and threaten you? Or do you like me more, or do you
like me less?"

"It's just the same," she said, "only that then I was unhappy all the
time, and now all the time I'm happy."

"Were you unhappy because I wasn't kind?"

She laughed that idea to scorn. "I was unhappy because you liked
somebody else more than me."

The amusement went out of Blizzard's face; the tenderness remained.
There was one thing that he was determined to do with his life, and that
was to make Rose a good husband. And he was very fond of her, and she
could make him laugh, but it wasn't going to be very easy, as long as
the image of another girl persisted in haunting him.

LI

When Wilmot Allen left Blizzard's house, he went direct to a
barber-shop, where he remained for three hundred years. During this
period, he lost his beard and thereby regained his self-respect. It took
him a hundred years to reach the Grand Central, and a thousand more to
get from there to Clovelly.

"I