he had to admit that Miss Smith looked as pleased as Archie at his appearance. Nor did she send a single furtive glance, slanting or backward, while they walked in the crisp, clean air. Once the train had started and Miss Smith was in the drawing-room, breakfasting with Mrs. Winter and Archie, he politely attended Mrs. Millicent through the morning meal in the dining-car. It was so good a meal that he naturally, although illogically, thought better of[49] Miss Smith’s prospects of innocence; and cheerily he sought Haley. He found him in the smoking compartment of the observation-car, having for companions no less personages than the magnate and a distinguished-looking New Englander, who, Rupert Winter made no doubt, was a Harvard professor of rank and renown among his learned kind. He knew the earmarks of the species. The New Englander’s pencil was flying over a little improvised pad of telegraph blanks, while he listened with absorbed interest to Haley’s rich Irish tones. There was a little sidewise lunge of Haley’s mouth, a faint twinkle of Haley’s frank and simple eyes which the colonel appraised at very nearly their real value. He knew that it isn’t in Irish-American nature to perceive a wide-open ear and not put something worth hearing into it. Besides, his sharp ears had brought him a key to the discourse, a sorrowful remark of the sergeant’s as he entered: “Yes, sor, thim wather torchures is terrible!”

[49]

He glanced suspiciously from one of Haley’s audience to the other. The newspaper cartoonist had pictured on all kinds of bodies of preying creatures, whether of the earth or air, the high brows, the round head, the delicate features, the[50] thin cheeks, the straight line of the mouth, and the mild, inexpressive eyes of the man before him. He had been extolled as a far-sighted benefactor of the world, and execrated picturesquely as the king of pirates who would scuttle the business of his country without a qualm.

[50]

Winter, amid his own questionings and problems, could not help a scrutiny of a man whose power was greater than that of medieval kings. He sat consuming a cigarette, more between his fingers than his lips; and glancing under drooping eyelids from questioner to narrator. At the colonel’s entrance he looked up, as did Haley, who rose to his feet with an unconscious salute. “I’d be glad to spake wid youse a minnit, if I might, General,” said Haley, “about where I put your dress-shute case, sor.”

The colonel, of course, did not expect any remarks about a suit case when he got Haley by himself at 

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