The Fenian story had always had its questionable points; but so long as the two men were merely chance fellow-boarders, it did as well as any other.  Now that they lived together, however, the multiplying suggestions that the old professor was something far other than he pretended became rather important.  The young man could not help being aware that Nicolovius neither looked nor talked in the slightest degree like an Irishman.  He could not help being certain that an Irishman who had fled to escape punishment for a political crime, in 1882, could have safely returned to his country long ago; and would undoubtedly have kept up relations with his friends overseas in the meantime.  Nor could he help being struck with such facts as that Nicolovius, while apparently little interested in the occasional cables about Irish affairs, had become seemingly absorbed in the three days’ doings of the United Confederate Veterans.

Now it was entirely all right for the old man to have a secret, and keep it.  There was not the smallest quarrel on that score.  But it was not in the least all right for one man to live with another, pretending to believe in him, when in reality he was doubting and questioning him at every move.  The want of candor involved in his present relations with Nicolovius continually fretted Queed’s conscience.  Ought he not in common honesty to tell the old man that he could not believe the Irish biography, leaving it to him to decide what he wanted to do about it?

Nicolovius, tramping in only a few minutes behind Queed, greeted his young friend as blandly as ever.  Physically, he seemed tired; much dust of city streets clung to his commonly spotless boots; but his eyes were so extraordinarily brilliant that Queed at first wondered if he could have been drinking.  However, this thought died almost as soon as it was born.

The professor walked over to the window and stood looking out, hat on head.  Presently he said:  “You saw the grand parade, I suppose?  For indeed there was no escaping it.”

Queed said that he had seen it.

“You had a good place to see it from, I hope?”

Excellent; Miss Weyland’s porch.

“Ah!” said Nicolovius, with rather an emphasis, and permitted a pause to fall.  “A most charming young lady—­charming,” he went on, with his note of velvet irony which the young man peculiarly disliked.  “I hear she is to marry your Mr. West.  An eminently suitable match in every way.  Yet I shall not soon forget how that delightful young man defrauded you of the editorship.”

Silence from Mr. Queed, the question of the editorship having already been thoroughly threshed out between them.

“I, too, saw the gallant proceedings,” resumed Nicolovius, retracing his thought.  “What an outfit!  What an outfit!”

He dropped down into his easy chair by the table, removed his straw hat with traces of a rare irritation in his manner, put on his black skull cap, and presently purred his thoughts aloud:—­