his bureau where he kept the Hair Bracelet, began vaguely to connect
themselves together in Mat's mind. A curious smile hovered about his
lips, and the cunning look brightened in his eyes. "The Painter-Man
won't tell anything about her, won't he? Perhaps that thing in his
drawer will." He muttered the words to himself, putting his hands in his
pockets, and mechanically kicking away a stone which happened to lie at
his feet on the pavement.

"What are you grumbling about now?" asked Zack. "Do you think I'm going
to stop here all day for the pleasure of hearing you talk to yourself?"
As he spoke, he vivaciously rapped his friend on the shoulder with his
stick. "Trust me to pave the way for you with Madonna!" he called out
mischievously, as he turned back in the direction of Mr. Blyth's house.

"Trust _me_ to have another look at your friend's Hair Bracelet," said
Mat quietly to himself. "I'll handle it this time, before I'm many days
older."

He nodded over his shoulder at Zack, and walked away quickly in the
direction of Kirk Street.

CHAPTER VII. THE BOX OF LETTERS.

The first thing Mat did when he got to his lodgings, was to fill and
light his pipe. He then sat down on his bear-skins, and dragged the box
close to him which he had brought from Dibbledean.

Although the machinery of Mat's mind was constructed of very clumsy and
barbaric materials; although book-learning had never oiled it, and wise
men's talk had never quickened it; nevertheless, it always contrived to
work on--much as it was working now--until it reached, sooner or later,
a practical result. Solitude and Peril are stern schoolmasters, but they
do their duty for good or evil, thoroughly with some men; and they
had done it thoroughly, amid the rocks and wildernesses of the great
American continent, with Mat.

Many a pipe did he empty and fill again, many a dark change passed over
his heavy features, as he now pondered long and laboriously over every
word of the dialogue that had just been held between himself and Zack.
But not so much as five minutes out of all the time he thus consumed,
was, in any true sense of the word, time wasted. He had sat down to his
first pipe, resolved that, if any human means could compass it, he would
find out how the young girl whom he had seen in Mr. Blyth's studio, had
first come there, and who she really was. When he rose up at last, and
put the pipe away to cool, he had thought the matter fairly out from
be