girl and Gray he did not doubt, and perhaps it was not strange that he
felt a slight partisanship for his friend, whose nature had so strangely
changed. Miss Ailsa was not there. Her father explained that her health
had required a change, and she was visiting some friends on the river.

"I'm thinkin' that the atmosphere is not so pure here. It is deficient
in ozone. I noticed it myself in the early morning. No! it was not the
confinement of the shop, for she never cared to go out."

He received the announcement of his good fortune with unshaken calm and
great practical consideration of detail. He would guarantee his identity
to the consul. As for James Gow, it was no more than fair; and what he
had expected of him. As to its being an equivalent of his loss, he could
not tell until the facts were before him.

"Miss Ailsa," suggested the consul venturously, "will be pleased to hear
again from her old friend, and know that he is succeeding."

"I'm not so sure that ye could call it 'succeeding,'" returned the old
man, carefully wiping the glasses of a pair of spectacles that he held
critically to the light, "when ye consider that, saying nothing of the
waste of valuable time, it only puts James Gow back where he was when he
went away."

"But any man who has had the pleasure of knowing Mr. and Miss Callender
would be glad to be on that footing," said the consul, with polite
significance.

"I'm not agreeing with you there," said Mr. Callender quietly; "and I'm
observing in ye of late a tendency to combine business wi'