s clear-cut features. Failure in the
slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.

"Did you say your _three_ daughters?" he asked of the Virginia
gentleman.

"Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in
Fairfax County," was the answer.

With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.

Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.

"One moment, sir," he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone
detected the anxiety--"am I not right in believing that one of the
young ladies is an _adopted_ daughter?"

"You are, suh," admitted the major, from the ground, "but how the
devil you knew it, suh, is mo' than I can tell."

"And mo' than I can tell, too," I said, as the car went on.

Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested
victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he
invited me into a cafe, promising to reveal the process of his latest
wonderful feat.

"In the first place," he began after we were comfortably seated, "I
knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy
and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he
did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance
that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.

"Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat
to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly,
impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that
one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red
and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about
the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his
patent leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals
cut off square at one end.

"Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound
to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort--and that
is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth
Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French
heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from
umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that
he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a
man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such
dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk.
Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatme