"Yes. You recollect me now! Thought you would. It's five years and over--ain't it? Rough times them, Gabriel--warn't they? Eh! But _you're_ lookin' well--doin' well, too. Hey? Well--what do you propose to do about this claim? Haven't made up your mind--hey? Come then--I'll make a proposition. First, I suppose your title's all right, hey?" It was so evident from Gabriel's dazed manner that, apart from his astonishment at meeting Peter Dumphy, he did not know what he was talking about, that Dumphy paused. "It's about these specimens," he added, eyeing Gabriel keenly, "the specimens you sent me." "Wot specimens?" said Gabriel vaguely, still lost in the past. "The ones your wife sent me--all the same thing, you know." "But it ain't," said Gabriel, with his old truthful directness. "You better talk to her 'bout thet. Thet's her look-out. I reckon now she _did_ say suthin'," continued Gabriel, meditatively, "about sendin' rock to Frisco to be tested, but I didn't somehow get to take an interest in it. Leastways, it's her funeral. You'd better see her." It was Mr. Dumphy's turn to be perplexed. In his perfect misapprehension of the character of the man before him, he saw only skilful business evasion under the guise of simplicity. He remembered, moreover, that in the earlier days of his prosperity as Dumphy and Jenkins, Commission Merchants, he was himself in the habit of referring customers with whom he was not ready to treat, to Jenkins, very much as he had just now been referred to Mrs. Conroy. "Of course," he said briskly; "only I thought I'd save time, which is short with me to-day, by coming directly to you. May not have time to see her. But you can write." "Thet's so," said Gabriel, "p'r'aps it's just as well in the long run. Ef ye don't see her, she'll know it ain't your fault. I'll let on that much to her." And having disposed of this unimportant feature of the interview, he continued, "Ye haven't heard nought o' Grace--ye mind Grace? Dumphy!--a purty little girl ez was with me up thar. Ye ain't heerd anything o' her--nor seen her, may be--hev you?" Of course this question at such a moment was to Mr. Dumphy susceptible of only one meaning. It was that Mrs. Conroy had confessed everything to Gabriel, and that he wished to use Dumphy's complicity in the deceit as a lever in future business transactions. Mr. Dumphy felt he had to deal with two consummate actors--one of whom was a natural hypocrite. For the first time in his life he was impatient of evil. We never admire truth and sincerity so highly as when we find it wanting in an adversary. "Ran off with some fellow, didn't she? Yes, I remember. You won't see her again. It's just as well for you! I'd call her dead, anyway." Although Dumphy was convinced that Gabriel's interest in the fate of his sister was hypocritical, he was not above a Christian hope that this might wound a brother's feelings. He turned to go.