“Fwhat yez know ’bout that?” Slavin forked viciously at the bacon he was frying.  “Blarney my sowl! an’ him not up for ‘Shtables’ at all! . . .”

  “With ev’rything that pretty is:—­
  My lady sweet, arise! arise! 
  My lady sweet, arise!”

“My lady shweet!”—­Slavin snorted unutterable things.

Yawning, the object of his remarks sauntered into the kitchen just then, and, deeming the occasion now to be a fitting one, the sergeant introduced his two subordinates to each other.

Yorke, with a bleak nod and handshake, swept the junior constable with a swiftly appraising glance.  As frigidly was his salutation returned.  Redmond remarked the regular features, suggestive rather of the ancient Norman type, the thin, curved, defiant nostrils and dark, arching eyebrows.  The face, with its indefinable stamp of birth and breeding was handsome enough in its patrician mould, but marred somewhat by the lines of cynicism, or dissipation, round the sombre, reckless eyes and intolerant mouth.  He had a cool, clear voice and a whimsical, devil-may-care sort of manner that was apparently natural to him, as was also a certain languid grace of movement.  He possessed an irritating mannerism of continually elevating his chin and dilating his curved nostrils disdainfully in a sort of soundless sniff.  Beyond a slight flush he showed little trace of his previous night’s dissipation.

“Where do you hail from?” he enquired of George with casual interest over the mess-table later.

“Ontario,” replied George laconically, “my people are farmers down there.”

For a moment Yorke’s arched brows lifted in puzzled surprise—­came a repetition of his offensive sniffing mannerism; and he stared pointedly away again.  It was difficult to be more insulting in dumb show.

George, mindful of his promise to Slavin, groaned inwardly.  “I am going to hate this fellow” he thought.

The sergeant, from the head of the table, kept a keen watch upon the pair.

“An’ fwhat?” came his soft brogue, by way of diversion, “an’ fwhat made yu’ take on th’ Force?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Wearily, George shoved his hands deep into his pockets and leant back in his chair.  “Old man’s pretty well fixed—­now.  He’s a member of the legislature for ——­ County.  I was at McGill for some terms—­medicine.”  A hopeless note crept into his tones.  “I fell down on my exams . . . ran amuck with the wrong bunch an’ all that—­an’—­an’ . . . kind of made a mess of things I guess. . . .  Went broke—­came West. . . .  That’s why. . . .”

With a forlorn sort of forced grin he gazed back at his interlocutor.  Yorke, unheeding the conversation, continued his breakfast as if he were alone.

“H-mm!” grunted Slavin, summing up the situation with native simplicity, “That’s ut, eh?—­but, for all ye have th’ spache an’ manners av a ginthleman—­ranker somehow—­somehow I misdoubt ye’re a way-back waster like Misther Yorkey here!”