The third week witnessed a falling off. Though always promptly on hand at the serving out of rations, Mr. O'Rourke did not even make a pretence of working in the garden. He would disappear mysteriously immediately after breakfast, and reappear with supernatural abruptness at dinner. Nobody knew what he did with himself in the interval, until one day he was observed to fall out of an apple-tree near the stable. His retreat discovered, he took to the wharves and the alleys in the distant part of the town. It soon became evident that his ways were not the ways of temperance, and that all his paths led to The Wee Drop. Of course Margaret tried to keep this from the family. Being a woman, she coined excuses for him in her heart. It was a dull life for the lad, any way, and it was worse than him that was leading Larry astray. Hours and hours after the old people had gone to bed, she would sit without a light in the lonely kitchen, listening for that shuffling step along the gravel walk. Night after night she never closed her eyes, and went about the house the next day with that smooth, impenetrable face behind which women hide their care. One morning found Margaret sitting pale and anxious by the kitchen stove. O'Rourke had not come home at all. Noon came, and night, but not Larry. Whenever Mrs. Bilkins approached her that day, Margaret was humming “Kate Kearney” quite merrily. But when her work was done, she stole out at the back gate and went in search of him. She scoured the neighborhood like a madwoman. O'Rourke had not been at the 'Finnigans'. He had not been at The Wee Drop since Monday, and this was Wednesday night. Her heart sunk within her when she failed to find him in the police-station. Some dreadful thing had happened to him. She came back to the house with one hand pressed wearily against her cheek. The dawn struggled through the kitchen windows, and fell upon Margaret crouched by the stove. She could no longer wear her mask. When Mr. Bilkins came down she confessed that Larry had taken to drinking again, and had not been home for two nights. “Mayhap he 's drownded hisself,” suggested Margaret, wringing her hands. “Not he,” said Mr. Bilkins; “he does n't like the taste of water well enough.” “Troth, thin, he does n't,” reflected Margaret, and the reflection comforted her. “At any rate, I 'll go and look him up after breakfast,” said Mr. Bilkins. And after breakfast, accordingly, Mr. Bilkins sallied forth with the depressing expectation of finding Mr. O'Rourke without much difficulty. “Come to think of it,” said the old gentleman to himself, drawing on his white cotton gloves as he walked up Anchor Street “_I_ don't want to find him.” III.