, who have suffered and know, the first, sincere,
hearty laugh, untrammelled and unlimited, that rings down the
hide-bound table of a dismal boarding-house, carries with it a surprise
and charm that outclasses them all. The effect on this occasion was
like the opening of a window letting in a gust of pure air. Some of the
more sensitive shivered at its freshness, and one woman raised her
eyeglasses in astonishment, but all the rest craned their heads in the
new boarder's direction, their faces expressing their enjoyment. As for
Miss Buffum and the schoolmistress, they so far forgot themselves as to
join audibly in the merriment.

What the secret of the man's power, or why the schoolteacher--who sat
on Miss Buffum's right--should have become suddenly hilarious, or how
Miss Buffum herself could be prodded or beguiled into smiles, no one at
my end of the table could understand; and yet, as the days went by, it
became more and more evident that not only were these two cold, brittle
exteriors being slowly thawed out, but that every one else within the
sound of his seductive voice was yielding to his influence. Stories
that had lain quiet in our minds for months for lack of a willing or
appreciative ear, or had been told behind our hands,--small pipings
most of them of club and social gossip, now became public property,
some being bowled along the table straight at the new boarder, who sent
his own rolling back in exchange, his big, sonorous voice filling the
room as he replied with accounts of his life in Poland among the
peasants; of his experiences in the desert; of a shipwreck off the
coast of Ceylon in which he was given up for lost; of a trip he made
across the Russian steppes in a sleigh--each adventure ending in some
strangely humorous situation which put the table in a roar.

None of these narratives, however, solved the mystery of his identity
or of his occupation. All our good landlady knew was that he had driven
up in a hack one afternoon, bearing a short letter of introduction from
a former lodger--a man who had lived abroad for the previous ten
years--introducing Mr. Norvic Bing; that after its perusal she had
given him the second-story front room, at that moment empty--a fact
that had greatly influenced her--and that he had at once moved in. His
trunks--there were two of them--had, she remembered, been covered with
foreign labels (and still were)--all of which could be verified by any
one who had a right to kn