“I wonder if you could recommend to me,” said Judge Gray as Richard was about to take his leave, “a capable young man—­college-bred, of course—­to come here daily or weekly as I might need him, to assist me in the work of preparing my book.  My eyes, as you see, will not allow me to use them for much more than the reading of a paragraph, and while my family are very ready to help whenever they have the time, mine is so serious a task, likely to continue for so long a period, that I shall need continuous and prolonged assistance.  Do you happen to know—?”

Well, it can hardly be explained.  This was a rich man’s heir and the grandson of millions more, in need—­according to his own point of view—­of no further education along the lines of work, and he had a voyage to the Far East in prospect.  Certainly, a fortnight earlier the thing furthest from his thoughts would have been the engaging of himself as amanuensis and general literary assistant to an ex-judge upon so prosaic a task as the history of the Supreme Court of the State.  To say that a rose-hued scarf, a laugh, and an alluring speaking voice explain it seems absurd, even when you add to these that which the young man saw during that moment of time when he looked into the face of their owner.  Rather would I declare that it was the subtle atmosphere of that which in all his travels he had never really seen before—­a home.  At all events a new force of some sort had taken hold upon him, and was leading him whither he had never thought to go.

If Judge Gray was surprised that the grandson of his old friend Matthew Kendrick should thus offer himself for the obscure and comparatively unremunerative post of secretary, he gave no evidence of it.  Possibly it did not seem strange to him that this young man should show interest in the work the Judge himself had laid out with an absorbing enthusiasm.  Therefore a trial arrangement was soon made, and Richard Kendrick agreed to present himself in Judge Gray’s library on the following morning at ten o’clock.  The only stipulation he made was that if, for any reason, he should decide suddenly to go upon a journey he had had some time in contemplation, he should be allowed to provide a substitute.  He had not yet so completely surrendered to his impulse that he was not careful to leave himself a loophole of escape.

The young man laughed to himself all the way down the avenue.  What would his grandfather say?  What would his friends say?  His friends should not know—­confound them!—­it was none of their business.  He would have his evenings; he would appear at his clubs as usual.  If comments were made upon his absence at other hours he would quietly inform the observing ones that he had gone to work, but would refuse to say where.  It certainly was a joke, his going to work; not that his grandfather had not often and strenuously recommended it, saying that the boy would never know happiness until he shook hands with labour; not that he himself had not fully intended some day to go into the training necessary to the assuming of the cares incident to the handling of a great fortune.  But thus far—­well, he had never been ready to begin.  One journey more, one more long voyage—­