“What of it?” said Mr. Molloy. “I was born in Galway, and the only sister I ever had is married there. Four sons she has, decent young men by all the accounts I’ve had of them. If I haven’t been in Galway for thirty years, that’s not to say that I’ve no feeling for my own flesh and blood. Why, the first girl I ever courted lived out Barna way. Many’s the time I’ve met her in the dusk on the seashore, and she half crying for fear of what her father would do. Katie Blake her name was. They married her to old Timmy Dolan before I’d been six months out of the country. A fistful of gold he had, and a hard fist it was. I heard tell he beat her, poor Katie. But ye see now, Ember, it’s the same way with your native place and your first love, ye can’t get quit of them. Now I hadn’t been a month in Chicago before I was courting another girl, but to save my neck I couldn’t tell ye what her name was, and ye may blow Chicago to hell to-morrow and I’ll not say a word.” “But not Galway?” Mr. Ember’s tone was very dry indeed. “You’ve said it. Not Galway. I’ll not stand for it.” Ember laughed. It was a laugh without merriment, cool, sarcastic. “Molloy, the man of sentiment!” he said. “Now doesn’t it strike you that it’s just a little late in the day for this display of feeling? May I ask why you never raised the interesting subject of your birthplace before?” “Is it sentiment that you’re sarcastic about?” said Molloy. “If it is, I’d have you remember that I’ve never let it interfere with business yet, and I wouldn’t now. Many’s the time I’ve put my feelings on one side when I was up against a business proposition. But I tell you right here that when I see my way to good money and to keeping what I call my sentiment too it looks pretty good to me, and I say to myself what I say to you, ‘What’s the sense of going looking for trouble?’” Ember laughed again. “I will translate,” he said. “From the sale of the Government formula you see your way to deriving a competency. You become, in a mild way, a capitalist. Luxuries before undreamed of are within your grasp—romantic sentiment, childhood’s memories, the finer feelings in fact. As a poor man you could not dream of affording them, though I dare say you’d have enjoyed them well enough. Is it a correct translation?” “It is,” said Molloy. “Molloy the capitalist!” Ember’s voice dropped just a little lower. “Molloy the man of sentiment! Molloy the traitor! No you don’t, Molloy, I’ve got you covered. Why, you fool, you don’t suppose I meet a man twice my own size in a place that no one knows of without taking the obvious precautions?” Molloy had first started violently, and next made a sort of plunge in Ember’s direction. At the sight of the small automatic pistol he checked himself, backed a pace or two, and said: “You’ll take that word back. It’s a damned lie.” He breathed hard and stared at the pistol in Ember’s hand.