eart of Miss Conway. This his admiration for
her determined him to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking did not
seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful friend
was the role he essayed, and he played it so successfully that the next
half-hour found them conversing pensively across two plates of
ice-cream, though yet there was no diminution of the sadness in Miss
Conway's large gray eyes.

Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and
brought down the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk
scarf. Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes.

"He gave me this the night he left for Italy," said Miss Conway. "I
had one for the locket made from this."

"A fine-looking man," said Mr. Donovan heartily. "How would it suit
you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney next
Sunday afternoon?"

A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the
other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black.

A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the
downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim
kinetoscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn a
look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that
love's lips could not keep back any longer the questions that love's
heart propounded.

"What's the matter, Andy, you are so solemn and grouchy to-night?"

"Nothing, Maggie."

"I know better. Can't I tell? You never acted this way before. What
is it?"

"It's nothing much, Maggie."

"Yes it is, and I want to know. I'll bet it's some other girl you are
thinking about. All right. Why don't you go and get her if you want
her? Take your arm away, if you please."

"I'll tell you then," said Andy wisely; "but I guess you won't
understand it exactly. You've heard of Mike Sullivan, haven't you?
'Big Mike' Sullivan, everybody calls him."

"No, I haven't," said Maggie. "And I don't want to, if he makes you
act like this. Who is he?"

"He's the biggest man in New York," said Andy, almost reverently. "He
can do about anything he wants to with Tammany or any other old thing
in the political line. He's a mile high and as broad as East River.
You say anything against Big Mike and you'll have a million men on your
collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit over to the old
country awhile back, and the kings took to their holes like rabbits.

"Well,