the familiar steep stairs; in four minutes more he
had raced across the street to the rectory, and brought up, breathless,
in the rector's study.

"What's the matter--a train to catch?" the rector demanded, regarding
him.

"Just that, doctor. Could I be spared for three days?"

The rector had not failed to have his theories about this brilliant,
hard-working, unaccountable, highly useful subaltern of his. His heart
had one of its warmest spots for McBirney. Something was wrong with
him, it had been evident for months; one must help him in the dark if
better could not be done.

"Surely," said the rector.

There was a fast train west in an hour; the man and his bag were on it,
and twenty-four hours later he was stumbling off a car at the solid,
vine-covered, red brick station at Forest Gate. An inquiry or two, and
then he had crossed the wide, short street, the single business street
of the rich suburb, facing the railway and the station, and was in the
post-office. He asked about one Robert Halarkenden. The postmaster
regarded him suspiciously. His affair was to sort letters, not to
answer questions. He did the first badly; he did not mean to do the
other at all.

"No such person ever been in town," he answered coldly, after a
moment's staring. The man who had hurried a thousand miles to ask the
question, set his bag on the floor and faced the postmaster grimly.

"He must have been," he stated. "I sent a lot of letters to him last
year, and they reached him."

"Oh--last year," the official answered stonily. "He might 'a' been
here last year. I only came January." And he turned with insulted
gloom to his labors.

McBirney leaned as far as he might into the little window. "Look
here," he adjured the man inside, "do be a Christian about this. I've
come from the East, a thousand miles, to find Halarkenden, and I know
he was here seven months ago. It's awfully important. Won't you treat
me like a white man and help me a little?"

Few people ever resisted Geoffrey McBirney when he pleaded with them.
The stolid potentate turned back wondering, and did not know that what
he felt stirring the dried veins within him was charm. "Why, sure," he
answered slowly, astonished at his own words, "I'll help you if I can.
Glad t' help anybody."

There was a cock-sure assistant in the back of the dirty sanctum, and
to him the friend of mankind applied.

"Halarkenden--Robert," the assistant snapped out. "'C