"No," he mumbled. "The mystery is that a man who has been to sea all his life could sail around for three days with a man bundled up in his top and not know it. When I think of him peeking down at me--and playing off that damn cat--probably without realizing it--scared to death--by gracious! Ridgeway, there was a pair of funks aboard this craft, eh? Wow--yow--I could sleep--" "I should think you could." McCord did not answer. "By the way," I speculated. "I guess you were right about Björnsen, McCord--that is, his fooling with the foretop. He must have been caught all of a bunch, eh?" Again McCord failed to answer. I looked up, mildly surprised, and found his head hanging back over his chair and his mouth opened wide. He was asleep. THE BOUNTY-JUMPER[20] By MARY SYNON From _Scribner's Magazine_ [20] Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1916, by Mary Synon. "... While faith, that in the mire was fain to wallow, Returns at last to find The cold fanes desolate, the niches hollow, The windows dim and blind, "And strown with ruins around, the shattered relic Of unregardful youth, Where shapes of beauty once, with tongues angelic, Whispered the runes of Truth." --_From "The Burden of Lost Souls_." On the day before Isador Framberg's body was brought back to Chicago from Vera Cruz, James Thorold's appointment as ambassador to Forsland was confirmed by the Senate of the United States. Living, Isador Framberg might never have wedged into the affairs of nations and the destinies of James Thorold. Marines in the navy do not intrigue with chances of knee-breeches at the Court of St. Jerome. More than miles lie between Forquier Street and the Lake Shore Drive. Dead, Isador Framberg became, as dead men sometimes become, the archangel of a nation, standing with flaming sword at the gateway to James Thorold's paradise. For ten years the Forsland embassy had been the goal of James Thorold's ambition. A man past seventy, head of a great importing establishment, he had shown interest in public affairs only within the decade, although his very build, tall, erect, commanding, and his manner suavely courteous and untouched by futile haste, seemed to have equipped him with a natural bent for public life. Marrying late in life, he seemed to have found his bent more tardily than did other men. But he had invested wealth, influence, and wisdom in the future of men who, come to power, were paying him with this grant of his desire. The news, coming to him unofficially but authoritatively from Washington, set him to cabling his wife and daughter in Paris and telegraphing his son whose steamer was just docking in New York. The boy's answer, delayed in transit and announcing that he was already on his way to Chicago, came with the morning newspapers and hurried his father through their contents in order that he might be on time to meet Peter at the station.