"There you are again," he exclaimed impatiently. "They had the same chance as you had. Didn't I even keep you waiting out there till I had seen them in turn. Not one of them has the qualifications you have. I want a man with a brain as well as a body." "But you don't know me, Mr. Horsfal. I have no friends, no testimonials; and I might be,--why! I might be the biggest criminal unhung." "Testimonials be blowed! Who wants testimonials? Any dub can get them. As for the other part,--do you think K. B. Horsfal of Baltimore, U. S. A., by this time, doesn't know a man after he has been a whole day in his company? "Sonny, take it from me,--there are mighty few American business men, who have topped a million dollars, who don't know a man through and through in less time than that, and without asking very many questions, either. Why, man!--that's their business; that's what makes their millions." There was no resisting K. B. Horsfal. "Thanks! I'll take the job," I said. "And I'm mighty grateful to you." "Good boy! You're all right. Leave it there!" His two hands clasped over mine. "Gee! but I'm glad that's over at last." "When do I start in?" I asked. "Right now. I'll phone for a launch to be ready to start up with us to-morrow morning. I'll show you over the proposition and leave you there. Phone for any little personal articles you may want. I'll attend to the bedding and all that sort of thing. Have the boy call you at six a. m. sharp." Nothing was overlooked by the masterly mind of my new, my first employer. We breakfasted early. An automobile was standing waiting for us at the hotel entrance; while, at a down-town slip, a trig little launch, already loaded up with our immediate necessities, was in readiness to shoot out through the Narrows as soon as we got aboard. This launch was named the _Edgar Allan Poe_, and, in consequence, I felt as if she were an old friend. As soon as the ropes were cast from the wharf, a glorious feeling of exhilaration started to run through me; for it seemed that I was being loosed from the old life and plunged into a new; a life I had been for so long hungering; the life of the woods, the hills and the sea, the quiet and freedom; the life of my dreams as well as of my waking fancies. Whether or not it would come up to my expectations was a question of conjecture, but I was not in a mood to trouble conjecturing. The swift little boat fought the tide rip in the Narrows like a lonely explorer defending his life against a horde of surging savages; and, gradually, she nosed her way through, past Prospect Point, then, inclining to the north shore, but heading forward all the time, past the lighthouse which stands sentinel on the rock at Point Atkinson; and away up the coast, leaving the city, with its dizzying and light-blotting sky-scrapers far and still farther behind, until nothing of that busy terminal remained to the observer but a distant haze.