throw a sort of spell--and that sounds absurd. You see, I've knocked
about the world a bit, east and west, but at the back of everything I'm
an Irishman; I have a fondness for the curious and the poetical and the
mysterious, and somehow you seemed to me last night to be mystery
itself, with your silence and your intentness." He dropped his voice to
the meditative key, unconsciously enjoying its soft, half-melancholy
cadences, and as he spoke the boy felt some chord in his own personality
vibrate to the mind that had asked for no introduction, demanded no
credentials, that had decreed their friendship and materialized it.

"No," the Irishman mused on, "there's no explaining it. You were mystery
itself, and you fired my imagination, because I happen to come from a
country of dreams. We Irish are born dreamers; sometimes we never wake
up at all, and then we're counted failures. But, I tell you what, when
all's said and done, we see what other men don't see. For instance,
what do you think my two friends saw in you last night?"

The boy shook his head, and there was a tremor of nervousness about his
mouth.

"They saw something dangerous--something to be avoided. Yet Mac is a
millionaire several times over, and Billy is distinctly a diplomatist
with a future."

The boy forced a smile; he was beginning to shrink from the pleasant
scrutiny, to wish that the vaporous fog of last night might dim the
searching light of the morning.

"What did they see?" he asked.