eavy, 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 her grace. He was no backward suitor. On
the second day he told her that he loved her, and from then onward he
repeated the same story with an absolute disregard of what she might say
to discourage him.

"Someone else?" he would cry. "Well, the worse luck for someone else!
Let him look out for himself! Am I to lose my life's chance and all my
heart's desire for someone else? You can keep on saying no, Ettie: the
day will come when you will say yes, and I'm young enough to wait."

He was a dangerous suitor, with his glib Irish tongue, and his pretty,
coaxing ways. There was about him also that glamour of experience and
of mystery which attracts a woman's interest, and finally her love. He
could talk of the sweet valle