"But I hear that you are anything but weak," said the Professor's daughter. "They call you a mystery, and a mystery is a success until it is solved." "But an unsolved conundrum might starve to death," he replied. "Not so long as it remained unsolved," the Professor declared. "We feed the performer till he explains the trick." "Then I suppose Mr. Milford will not explain his trick," said the girl. "I'd be foolish to shut off my supplies, wouldn't I?" "Yes," she admitted, "but if you have a mystery you ought to let your friends share it." "Ha," said the Professor, "that would mean the disposition of all the shares. But I don't see why they call my friend a mystery. A man comes into the neighborhood and goes to work. Is there anything so mysterious about that? It would be more of a mystery if he lived without work." "Father sometimes fails to catch the atmosphere of a situation," said the girl, giving Milford a smile not so narrow and not so dry with irony. "One's appearance might have something to do with the estimate formed of him," she continued. "The hired man marches from the east to the west and back again," said Milford. "And I am a hired man--hired by myself to do something, and I am going to do it," he added with a tightening of his face. "But that mysterious something?" queried the girl. "What is it?" "To make money," he answered. "Simmer it down and that's all there is to life." In her heart she agreed with him, but she took issue. She said that there was something better than money. He asked if it were an old mill, and they laughed themselves into better acquaintance. "It would be well to sit here," said the Professor to Milford, "but I want you to go up to my work shop with me. I wish to show you something." As Milford arose to follow him, he thought that on the woman's face he saw a sneer at "work shop," and he felt that she and her daughter had learned to look upon it as an idle corner, full of useless lumber. The schemes of this ducking failure of a man were not of serious interest to them. His readiness to talk made him seem light of purpose, and a sigh that came from his heart might have been an unuttered word breathed upon the air, a word in excuse of his poverty.