n all her
exquisite plumage she had alighted in this dull place, filling it with
freshness. And an onlooker would have gathered that the young artist and
the beautiful lady who wrote were the best of merry chums, the silent man
in the background a civilly tolerated outsider.

After a while something of this seemed to strike young Randal. "Look
here, Daragh, you haven't to start uptown yet! Why don't you contribute
something to the gayety of nations? Haven't you any parlor tricks?" Then
he caught up his own work and his grin faded. "Tricks ... yes, that's
what he can do, Miss Vail. Conjuring tricks. He can turn a skulking alley
rat into something faintly resembling a man--but"--his courage and
brightness fell from him like a masker's domino on the stroke of twelve
and the fingers rose to his face, picking and plucking--"he can't keep it
from turning back again."

"I can, indeed, lad," said the Irishman, stoutly.

"I don't know, Daragh ... I don't know." He leaned back on the couch,
spineless with nervous exhaustion, and Jane felt a sick distaste and
horror enveloping her.

"'Tis a true word, laddie," said Michael. "You don't know; none of us
know--and we don't have to know, praises be, beyond the next hour, beyond
the next step on the path." He rose and crossed slowly to the young man
and pushed him gently down until he was resting at full length on the
couch. "Easy, now! Let you lie there at your ease. Miss Vail knows how
you haven't the whole of your strength in you yet, and you painting and
drawing the day long!"

Young Randal muttered something brokenly and tried to rise, but the big
Irishman held him firmly. "Easy, I'm telling you!" The boy relaxed,
stretching out to his lank length, one arm crooked childishly over his
eyes, and Michael Daragh sat down beside him, his long legs folded under
him, on the floor. "'Tis the true word, surely," he said. "We don't know,
indeed. And--glory be--there's many the time that the thing you've braced
yourself so fine and strong to stand doesn't happen at all, and you never
have to stand it. That was the way of it with Maggie Kinsella at home,"
he said.

Jane, seeing his intention, stepped to the door and snapped off the
overhead light, and tilted the shade on the lamp until Randal's couch was
in shadow.

"I'm so ashamed ... with her here ..." it was a muffled whisper from
under the shrouding arm,--"so rotten weak...."

"This Maggie Kinsella makes the finest lace for mile