“It’s aisy enough,” Linsky replied, with a sigh. “Tin long weeks was I scurryin’ from wan ind of the land to the other, lukkin’ for this invisible divil of a Hugh O’Mahony”--Zeke stretched out his feet here with a sudden movement, unnoted by the other--“makin’ inquiries here, foindin’ traces there, gettin’ laughed at somewhere else, till me heart was broke entoirely. ‘He’s in the army,’ says they. ‘Whereabouts?’ says I. Here, there, everwhere they sint me on a fool’s errand. Plintv of places I came upon where he had been, but divil a wan where he was; and thin I gave it up and wint to New York to sail, and there I made some fri’nds, and wint out wid ’em and they spoke fair, and I drank wid ’em, and, faith, whin I woke I was a soldier, wid brass buttons on me and a gun; and that’s the truth of it--worse luck! And _now_ I’ll sleep!” “And this Hugh What-d’ye-call-him--the fellow you was huntin’ after--where did he live before the war?” “’Twas up in New York State--a place they call Tecumsy--he’d been a shoemaker there for years. I have here among me papers all they know about him and his family there. It wan’t much, but it makes his identity plain, and that’s the great thing.” “And what d’ye reckon has become of him?” “If ye ask me in me capacity as solicitor’s clark, I’d say that, for purposes of law, he’d be aloive till midsummer day next, and thin doy be process of statutory neglict, and niver know it as long as he lives; but if you ask me proivate opinion, he’s as dead as a mackerel; and, if he isn’t, he will be in good toime, and divil a ha’porth of shoe-leather will I waste more on him. And now good-noight to ye, sur!” Linsky fell to snoring before any reply came. Zeke had meant to tell him that they were to rise at three and set out upon a venturesome vidette-post expedition together. He wondered now what it was that had prompted him to select this raw and undrilled Irishman as his comrade in the enterprise which lay before him. Without finding an answer, his mind wandered drowsily to another question--Ought O’Mahony to be told of the search for him or not? That vindictive and sullen Hughie should be heir to anything seemed an injustice to all good fellows; but heir to what Linsky called a great estate!--that was ridiculous! What would an ignorant cobbler like him do with an estate?