at Montreal or travelling in a train to Vancouver. But I was tired of London and thought the trip might be pleasant. I went to Canada by way of New York, partly because the big Cunarders are comfortable steamers, partly because I find New York an agreeable city. I have several friends there and I like the life of the place—for a fortnight at a time. I do not know whether I should like it for a longer time because I have never had money enough to live in New York for more than a fortnight. As a regular place of residence it might be too stimulating for me; but I shall probably never know how I should feel about it at the end of six weeks.

It was Gorman who took the initiative on board the steamer. I do not think that I should ever have made his acquaintance if he had not forced himself on me. He accosted me, introduced himself, carried the acquaintance through to an intimacy by sheer force of personality, and ended by inducing me to like him. He began his attack on me during that very uncomfortable time just before the ship actually starts. It is never possible to settle down to the ordinary routine of life at sea until the screw begins to revolve. There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. Mail bags, so I understand, are being put on board. Stewards, carrying cabin trunks, swarm in the corridors. Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other at the windows of the purser's office, under pretence of expecting letters or despatching telegrams. Women passengers eye other women passengers with suspicion and distrust. It is very interesting to notice how people who scowl at each other on the first day of a voyage exchange cards and promise to pay each other visits after six days as fellow travellers. At the end of another six days—such is the usual unfortunate experience—the cards are lost and the promises forgotten. A poet and, following him, a novelist have compared human intercourse to the "speaking" of ships that pass in the night. They would have found a more forcible, though perhaps less poetic, illustration of their idea in the friendships formed by passengers in the same steamer. They are intimate, but they are as a rule utterly transitory. However I have no right to complain. The friendship which Gorman forced on me has lasted eighteen months and shows no sign yet of wearing thin.

He caught me in the smoking room. I had settled down quietly in a comfortable chair, and was wondering, as I always do in that smoking room, at the grain of the wood in the panel above the fireplace. There was no one else in the room except a steward who hovered near the door which leads to the bar. Experience has taught me that the smoking room, the most populous part of the ship during the voyage, is generally empty during the two hours before the start. I thought I should have the place to myself. I was half way through my cigar and had failed to decide whether the panel is a fake or a natural curiosity when Gorman entered. He is a big man and fat. He is clean shaved and has bushy grey eyebrows. Heavy rolls of skin hang down from his jaws. He wears an unusually large gold signet ring. His appearance is not attractive. He sat down beside me and addressed me at once.

"Sir James Digby?" he said.

That is my name. I admitted it by nodding.

"I was glancing over the passenger list," he said, "and saw you were on board. The purser told me you were up here somewhere. My name's Gorman, Michael Gorman."

The name gave me no information beyond the fact that the speaker was an Irishman. There must be several thousand Gormans in Ireland and I could not remember that I was acquainted with any one of them. I nodded again.

"I don't suppose you remember me," said Gorman, "but you used to see me pretty frequently once, about twenty-five years ago. My father kept the only shop in Curraghbeg, and you used to come in and buy sweets, a penny worth at a time. You were a small boy then. I was a bit older, fifteen or sixteen perhaps."

Curraghbeg is a miserable village standing in the middle of the tract of land which used to be my property. It is close to Curraghbeg House, where my father kept up such state as befitted an Irish gentleman of his day. I believe I was born there. If I thought of any place in the world as home I suppose it would be Curraghbeg; but I have no feeling for the place except a mild dislike. The House is now a nunnery, in better repair, but almost certainly more gauntly hideous than when I owned it. The village, I expect, is still as sordid as when I saw it last. I remembered Gorman's shop, a dirty little public house, where sacks of flour, tea and sugar candy were sold, as well as whisky and emigration tickets. I also remembered my father's opinion of Gorman, old Dan Gorman, the father of the man beside me. He was "one of the worst blackguards in the county, mixed up with every kind of League and devilment." Those were the days when the land agitation was at its height and Irish gentlemen—they were fighting for their existence as a class—felt rather strongly about the leaders of the people.

Of any younger Gorman I had no recollection whatever. Nor did I at that moment, or for some time afterwards, connect the son of the ruffianly old publican with the journalist and politician of whom I had heard a good deal.

"Funny thing," he said, "running into you like this. Let's have a drink of some sort."

He snapped his fingers to attract the attention of the steward.

I am not, I fear, thoroughly modernised. Though I like American social life I have never been able to accept the theory of the wickedness of class distinctions. As a political system democracy seems to me extraordinarily foolish, but I would not go out of my way to protest against it. My servant is, so far as I am concerned, welcome to as many votes as he can get. I would very gladly make mine over to him if I could. I do not suppose that it matters much in reality whether laws are made by dukes or cornerboys, but I like, as far as possible, to associate with gentlemen in private life. I was not prepared to sit drinking with the son of old Dan Gorman if I could help it.

I intended to say so, as politely as such a thing can be said. The man's face made me pause. He was looking at me with a curious smile, half innocent, half whimsical. His eyes expressed friendliness of a perfectly simple, unaffected kind. I realised that he was not a snob, that he was not trying to push himself on me for the sake of my position and title, the position of a disinherited Irish landlord and a title which, for all any one could tell by hearing it, might be the reward of a successful provincial doctor. I realised also, with an uncomfortable shiver, that he understood my feeling and was slightly amused at it. It struck me suddenly that I, and not Gorman, was the snob.

The steward stood at his elbow.

"Whisky and soda?" said Gorman. "We are still in English waters. Or shall I say cocktails, as we're, on our way to America?"

I am a temperate man and have made it a rule not to drink before luncheon. But I was so much ashamed of my first feeling about Gorman that I thought it well to break my rule. I should, under the circumstances, have considered myself justified in breaking a temperance pledge, on the principle, once explained to me by an archdeacon, that charity is above rubrics. I gave my vote for whisky and soda as the more thorough-going drink of the two. A cocktail is seldom more than a mouthful. Gorman gave the order.

"Don't you think," he said, "that it would be rather a good plan for us to sit together at meals? I'll make arrangements with the steward and have a table reserved for us in the upper saloon. I can manage it all right. I often cross on this boat and everybody knows me."

Again he looked at me and again smiled in his fascinating childlike way.

"I'm A-1 at ordering meals," he said, "and it really does make a difference on these ships if you know how to