“You know Montmartre?”

“No.”

The Irishman laughed again.  “Good!” he cried.  “You’re a fine adventurer!  You have the right spirit!  Always know your own mind, whatever else you’re ignorant about!  But I ought to tell you that Montmartre swarms with your needy fellow-countrymen.”

The boy looked up.  “My needy fellow-countrymen will not harm me—­or know me.”

“Good again!  Then the coast is clear!  I only thought to warn you.”

“I appreciate the thought.”  For an instant the old reserve touched the voice.

“Now, Max!  Now!  Now!” The other turned to him, caught his arm again, and swung him out into the Esplanade des Invalides.  “You’re not to be doing that, you know!  You’re not!  You’re not!  I see through you like a pane of glass.  Sometimes you forget yourself and get natural, like you did in the cafe this time back; then, all of a sudden, some imp of suspicion shakes his tail at you and says, ’Look here, young man, put that Irishman in his place!  Keep him at a respectable arm’s length!’ Now, isn’t that gospel truth?”

The boy laughed, vanquished.  “Monsieur,” he said, naively, “I will not do it again.”

“That’s right!  You see, I’m not interesting or picturesque enough to suspect.  When all’s said and done, I’m just a poor devil of an Irishman with enough imagination to prevent his doing any particular harm in this world, and enough money to prevent his doing any special good.  My name is Edward Fitzgerald Blake, and I have an old barracks of a castle in County Clare.  I have five aunts, seven uncles, and twenty-four first cousins, every one of whom thinks me a lost soul; but I have neither sister nor brother, wife nor child to help or hinder me.  There now!  I have gone to confession, and you must give me absolution and an easy penance!”

Max laughed.  “Thank you, monsieur!”

“Not ‘monsieur,’ for goodness’ sake!  Plain Ned, if you don’t mind.”

“Ned?” The slight uncertainty, coupled with the foreign intonation, lent a charm to the name.

“That’s it!  But I never heard it sound half so well before.  Personally, it always struck me as being rather like its owner—­of no particular significance.  But I must be coming down to earth again, I have an appointment with our friend McCutcheon at three o’clock.”  He drew out his watch.  “Oh, by the powers and dominations, I have only two minutes to keep it in!  How the time has raced!  I say, there’s an auto-taxi looming on the horizon, over by the Invalides; I must catch it if I can.  Come, boy!  Put your best foot foremost!”

Laughing and running like a couple of school-boys, they zigzagged through the labyrinth of formal trees, and secured the cab as it was wheeling toward the quais.

“Good!” exclaimed Blake.  “And now, what next?  Can I give you a lift?” His foot was on the step of the cab, his fingers on the handle of the door, his face, flushed from his run and from the cold, looked pleasantly young.  The boy’s heart went out to him in a glow of comradeship.