"How much he really loved her was never suspected until he came home one
evening and found that she had run away with the youngest son of one of the
proprietors of the shipyard.
"He learned within a week that they had sailed for America. He packed a
valise, took the money that he had saved, and started out.
"'But where are you going to look for them?' I asked him.
"'To America,' he said, turning toward me, his face drawn and gaunt with
the grief that he had survived.
"'But America is a vast country.'
"'I will hunt till I find her.'
"'And when you find her--you will not kill her, surely!'
"'I will try to get her to come back to me.'
"He took passage in the steerage, and I do not know what happened to him
after that."
Each of us hid his emotions in his beer-mug. Then Max ordered fresh mugs,
and said that Breffny's story recalled a somewhat similar thing that he had
witnessed in Denver.
"When I was a reporter out there, I was standing one evening in front of a
hotel. A crowd collected to see the body of a guest brought out and placed
upon an ambulance.
"'Where are you taking him, and what is it?' I asked the driver.
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