tables; and the young man heard his neighbor bullying the waiters and
commenting in an audible undertone, upon every dish that was served to
him--swearing by all the heathen gods, known and unknown, that there was
nothing fit to eat in the house; and that if it were not for the fact that
there was no place else in the cursed town that served half so good, he
would not touch a mouthful in the place. Then, to the other's secret
amusement he fell to right heartily and made an astonishing meal of the
really excellent viands he had so roundly vilified.

Dinner over, the young man went with his cigar to the long veranda; intent
upon enjoying the restful quiet of the evening after the tiresome days on
the train. Carrying a chair to an unoccupied corner, he had his cigar just
nicely under way when the Irish Setter--with all the dignity of his royal
blood--approached. Resting a seal-brown head, with its long silky ears,
confidently upon the stranger's knee, the dog looked up into the man's
face with an expression of hearty good-fellowship in his soft,
golden-brown eyes that was irresistible.

"Good dog," said the man, heartily, "good old fellow," and stroked the
sleek head and neck, affectionately.

A whiff of pipe smoke drifted over his shoulder, and he looked around. The
dog's master stood just behind him; regarding him with that quizzing, half
pathetic, half humorous, and altogether cynical expression.

The young man who had been so unresponsive to the advances of his fellow
passengers, for some reason--unknown, probably, to himself--now took the
initiative. "You have a fine dog here, sir," he said encouragingly.

Without replying, the other turned away and in another moment returned
with a chair; whereupon the dog, with slightly waving, feathery tail,
transferred his attention to his master.

Caressing the seal-brown head with a gentle hand, and apparently speaking
to the soft eyes that looked up at him so understandingly, the man said,
"If the human race was fit to associate with such dogs, the world would be
a more comfortable place to live in." The deep voice that rumbled up from
some unguessed depths of that sunken chest was remarkable in its
suggestion of a virile power that the general appearance of the man seemed
to deny. Facing his companion suddenly, he asked with a direct bluntness,
"Are you not Aaron King--son of the Aaron King of New England political
fame?"

Under the searching gaze of those green-gray e