t him
back every minute."

McMurdo continued to gaze at her in open admiration until her eyes
dropped in confusion before this masterful visitor.

"No, miss," he said at last, "I'm in no hurry to see him. But your
house was recommended to me for board. I thought it might suit me--and
now I know it will."

"You are quick to make up your mind," said she with a smile.

"Anyone but a blind man could do as much," the other answered.

She laughed at the compliment. "Come right in, sir," she said. "I'm
Miss Ettie Shafter, Mr. Shafter's daughter. My mother's dead, and I run
the house. You can sit down by the stove in the front room until father
comes along--Ah, here he is! So you can fix things with him right away."

A heavy, elderly man came plodding up the path. In a few words McMurdo
explained his business. A man of the name of Murphy had given him the
address in Chicago. He in turn had had it from someone else. Old
Shafter was quite ready. The stranger made no bones about terms, agreed
at once to every condition, and was apparently fairly flush of money.
For seven dollars a week paid in advance he was to have board and
lodging.

So it was that McMurdo, the self-confessed fugitive from justice, took
up his abode under the roof of the Shafters, the first step which was
to lead to so long and dark a train of events, ending in a far distant
land.

Chapter 2

The Bodymaster

McMurdo was a man who made his mark quickly. Wherever he was the folk
around soon knew it. Within a week he had become infinitely the most
important person at Shafter's. There were ten or a dozen boarders
there; but they were honest foremen or commonplace clerks from the
stores, of a very different calibre from the young Irishman. Of an
evening when they gathered together his joke was always the readiest,
his conversation the brightest, and his song the best. He was a born
boon companion, with a magnetism which drew good humour from all around
him.

And yet he showed again and again, as he had shown in the railway
carriage, a capacity for sudden, fierce anger, which compelled the
respect and even the fear of those who met him. For the law, too, and
all who were connected with it, he exhibited a bitter contempt which
delighted some and alarmed others of his fellow boarders.

From the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that the
daughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that he had
set eyes upon her beauty and