felt vaguely for the rim of the hat that had fallen from his hands.

"Go home, Mike," said the Governor gently. "Go home and tell the wife and the mother." When his petitioners had departed, the Governor sat long in the reception room, thinking of the old days. When he opened his watch it was not to note the hour, but to look on a woman's likeness; and he crossed his arms on the desk and buried his face in them. The old days had given him much that the later years had stolen from him. He sighed and lifted his head.

"Poor old Mike!" he said. "I'm square with him at last. I wonder why he took my part that day?" And he wearily climbed the stair to his lonely room.

He did not know that when Red Head went home that noon, nearly fifty years before, he had found Mrs. Murphy cutting out a pair of corduroy breeches.