over the affair, but when I told her that Bob was to be gone for a week
and that I was uneasy, she said in her calm, confident manner: "I don't
think there is anything to worry about, Mr. Randolph. Mr. Brownley is too
much of a man to allow an affair of dollars to do anything more than annoy
him. He will be back all the better for his rest." She dropped her long
lashes in a this-conversation-is-closed way that we had come to know meant
going time.




Chapter IV.



The following week Bob returned to the office. He had not changed, and yet
he had changed greatly. Rest had apparently done much for him. His colour
was good, his step elastic as of old, and his head was thrown back as if
he were buckled up for the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was
something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm,
yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms
of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the
optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not
help feeling that if I had been a leader of the Russian terrorists, and
this man who now sat before me had come to my ken when I was selecting
bomb-throwers, I should have seized upon him of all men as the one to
stalk the Czar or his marked minions. Surely the iron that had entered
Bob's soul a week before had affected his whole being. I think Beulah
Sands had some such thoughts. For I saw a shadow of perplexity cross her
broad, low forehead after her first meeting with him, a shadow that had