"Mine does," said Father Murray. "I once had occasion to offer a prayer
at an important banquet at which that gentleman was the guest of honor.
He sat near me, and when I asked him where he had acquired such a mastery
of English, he told me that he had been for five years minister at the
Court of St. James. He is now accredited to Washington. Do you see why
I suggest that Sihasset is greatly honored to-day?"

Mark could not conceal his astonishment.

"But why under heaven," he said, "should a foreign diplomat be mixed up
in a camp of Slavic laborers?"

"There are strange things in diplomacy," said Father Murray. "And
stranger things in Sihasset when the town constable has so much interest
in your taking of tea at Killimaga. If you had turned around a moment
ago, you would have seen our constable's coattails disappearing behind
the bushes on our right."




CHAPTER V

WITH EMPTY HANDS

In the long after years Mark Griffin used to wonder at the strange way
in which love for Ruth Atheson entered his life. Mark always owned
that, somehow, this love seemed sent for his salvation. It filled his
life, but only as the air fills a vacuum; so it was, consequently,
nothing that prevented other interests from living with it. It aroused