Of course the people in the village could never be contented without learning everything there was to be learned about their visitor.  All the city papers were examined for advertisements.  If a cashier had absconded, if a broker had disappeared, if a railroad president was missing, some of the old stories would wake up and get a fresh currency, until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis.  Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an unsolved enigma.  The “Sachem” of the boating girls became the “Sphinx” of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this young man’s odd way of living.

V

The enigma studied.

It was a curious, if it was not a suspicious, circumstance that a young man, seemingly in good health, of comely aspect, looking as if made for companionship, should keep himself apart from all the world around him in a place where there was a general feeling of good neighborhood and a pleasant social atmosphere.  The Public Library was a central point which brought people together.  The Pansophian Society did a great deal to make them acquainted with each other for many of the meetings were open to outside visitors, and the subjects discussed in the meetings furnished the material for conversation in their intervals.  A card of invitation had been sent by the Secretary to Maurice, in answer to which Paolo carried back a polite note of regret.  The paper had a narrow rim of black, implying apparently some loss of relative or friend, but not any very recent and crushing bereavement.  This refusal to come to the meetings of the society was only what was expected.  It was proper to ask him, but his declining the invitation showed that he did not wish for attentions or courtesies.  There was nothing further to be done to bring him out of his shell, and seemingly nothing more to be learned about him at present.

In this state of things it was natural that all which had been previously gathered by the few who had seen or known anything of him should be worked over again.  When there is no new ore to be dug, the old refuse heaps are looked over for what may still be found in them.  The landlord of the Anchor Tavern, now the head of the boarding-house, talked about Maurice, as everybody in the village did at one time or another.  He had not much to say, but he added a fact or two.

The young gentleman was good pay,—­so they all said.  Sometimes he paid in gold; sometimes in fresh bills, just out of the bank.  He trusted his man, Mr. Paul, with the money to pay his bills.  He knew something about horses; he showed that by the way he handled that colt,—­the one that threw the hostler and broke his collar-bone.  “Mr. Paul come down to the stable.  ’Let me see