“Good evening, Carlin; I hoped you would still be up.  I stopped on the way down or I should have been here earlier.”

A man of sixty, with a ruddy, weather-beaten face set in a half-moon of gray whiskers, the ends tied under his chin, sprang to his feet.  “Ah!  Is that you, Mr. Felix?  I been a-wonderin’ where you been a-keepin’ yourself.  Take this chair; it’s more comfortable.  I was thinkin’ somehow you might come in to-night, and so I took a shy at my bills to have somethin’ to do.  I suppose”—­he stopped, and in a whisper added:  “I suppose you haven’t heard anything, have you?”

“No; have you?”

“Not a word,” answered the ship-chandler gravely.

“I thought perhaps you might have had a letter,” urged Felix.

“Not a line of any kind,” came the answer, followed by a sidewise movement of the gray head, as if its owner had long since abandoned hope from that quarter.

“Do you think anything is the matter?”

“Nothin’, or I should ‘a’ ’eard.  My notion is that Martha kep’ on to Toronto with that sick man she nursed on the steamer.  Maybe she’s got work stiddy and isn’t a-goin’ to come back.”

“But she would have let you know?” There was a ring of anxiety now, tinged with a certain impatience.

“Perhaps she would, Mr. Felix, and perhaps she wouldn’t.  Since our mother died Martha gets rather cocky sometimes.  Likes to be her own boss and earn her own living.  I’ve often ’eard her say it before I left ’ome, and she has earned it, I must say—­and she’s got to, same as all of us.  I suppose you been keepin’ it up same as usual—­trampin’ and lookin’?”

“Yes.”  This came as the mere stating of a fact.

“And I suppose there ain’t nothin’ new—­no clew—­ nothin’ you can work on?” The speaker felt assured there was not, but it might be an encouragement to suggest its possibility.

“No, not the slightest clew.”

“Better give it up, Mr. Felix, you’re only wastin’ your time.  Be worse maybe when you do come up agin it.”  The ship-chandler was in earnest; every intonation proved it.

O’Day arose from his seat and looked down at his companion.  “That is not my way, Carlin, nor is it yours; and I have known you since I was a boy.”

“And you are goin’ to keep it up, Mr. Felix?”

“Yes, until I know the end or reach my own.”

“Well, then, God’s help go with ye!”

Into the shadows again—­past long rows of silent warehouses, with here and there a flickering gas-lamp—­ until he reached Dover Street.  He had still some work to do up-town, and Dover Street would furnish a short cut along the abutment of the great bridge, and so on to the Elevated at Franklin Square.