Nicolovius’s haughty aloofness, his rigid uncommunicativeness, his grand ducal bearing and the fact that he paid eighteen dollars a week for a suite had of course made him a man of mark and mystery in the boarding-house, and in the romancings of Miss Miller he had figured as nearly everything from a fugitive crown prince to a retired counterfeiter.  However, Queed positively refused to be drawn away from the book-shelves to listen to his story, and the old professor was compelled to turn away from the fire and to talk, at that, to the back of the young man’s head.

Nicolovius, so he told Queed, was not an American at all, but an Irishman, born at Roscommon, Connaught.  His grandfather was a German, whence he got his name.  But the lad grew up in the image of his mother’s people.  He became an intense patriot even for Ireland, an extremist among extremists, a notorious firebrand in a land where no wood glows dully.  Equipped with a good education and natural parts, he had become a passionate leader in the “Young Ireland” movement; was a storm-centre all during the Home Rule agitations; and suddenly outgrew Ireland overnight during the “Parnellism and Crime” era.  He got away to the coast, disguised as a coster, and once had the pleasure of giving a lift in his cart to the search-party who wanted him, dead or alive.  This was in the year 1882.

“You were mixed up in the Phoenix Park murders, I daresay?” interjected Queed, in his matter-of-fact way.

“You will excuse my preference for a certain indefiniteness,” said Nicolovius, with great sweetness.

On this side, he had drifted accidentally into school-teaching, as a means of livelihood, and stuck at it, in New York, St. Paul, and, for many years, in Chicago.  The need of a warmer climate for his health’s sake, he said, had driven him South, and some three years before an appointment at Milner’s Collegiate School had brought him to the city which he and the young man now alike called their own.

Queed, still sacking the shelves for another find, asked if he had never revisited Ireland.

“Ah, no,” said Nicolovius, “there was no gracious pardon for my little peccadillo, no statute of limitations to run after me and pat me on the head.  I love England best with the sea between us.  You may fancy that a refugee Irishman has no fondness for reading history.”

He flicked the fire-ash from his cigar and looked at Queed.  All the time he talked he had been watching the young man, studying him, conning him over....

“My life ended when I was scarcely older than you.  I have been dead while I was alive....  God pity you, young man, if you ever taste the bitter misery of that!”

Queed turned around surprised at the sudden fierceness of the other’s tone.  Nicolovius instantly sprang up and went over to poke the fire; he came back directly, smiling easily and pulling at his long cigar.