prompted
him; but to note the effect he was making, she kept her eyes upon me.
Having first compared my name, fame, and novels with those of Charles
Dickens, Walter Scott, and Archibald Clavering Gunter, and to the
disadvantage of those gentlemen, Farrell said the similarity of our
names often had been commented upon, and that when from my letter he
had learned our families both were from the South of Ireland, he had
a premonition we might be related. Duncannon, where he was born, he
pointed out, was but forty miles from Youghal, and the fishing boats out
of Waterford Harbor often sought shelter in Blackwater River. Had any of
my forebears, he asked, followed the herring?

Alarmed, lest at this I might take offense, Mrs. Farrell interrupted
him.

"The Fletchers and O'Farrells of Youghal," she exclaimed, "were gentry.
What would they be doing in a trawler?"

I assured her that so far as I knew, 1750 being before my time, they
might have been smugglers and pirates.

"All I ever heard of the Farrells," I told her, "begins after they
settled in New York. And there is no one I can ask concerning them. My
father and mother are dead; all my father's relatives are dead, and
my mother's relatives are as good as dead. I mean," I added, "we don't
speak!"

To my surprise, this information appeared to afford my visitors great
satisfaction. They exchanged hasty glances.

"Then," exclaimed Mr. Farrell, eagerly; "if I understand you, you have
no living relations at all--barring those that are dead!"

"Exactly!" I agreed.

He drew a deep sigh of relief. With apparent irrelevance but with a
carelessness that was obviously assumed, he continued.

"Since I come to America," he announced, "I have made heaps of money."
As though in evidence of his prosperity, he flashed the high hat. In
the sunlight it coruscated like one of his wife's diamonds. "Heaps of
money," he repeated. "The mills are still in my name," he went on, "but
five years since I sold them--We live on the income. We own Harbor
Castle, the finest house on the whole waterfront."

"When all the windows are lit up," interjected Mrs. Farrell, "it's often
took for a Fall River boat!"

"When I was building it," Farrell continued, smoothly, "they called
it Farrell's Folly; but not NOW." In friendly fashion he winked at
me, "Standard Oil," he explained, "offered half a million for it. They
wanted my wharf for their tank steamers. But, I needed it for my yacht!"

I must