"Why, Katie," Dick said, "that's no spy's work, that's a joke." But it took much explanation for Katie to see it. "Don't buy a bond"--that to her was treason. "The Kaiser says so," more treason. Finally she gave in to Dick's persuasion, and she went off saying, "It's a fool I am," but Dick always had a feeling that he had not quite convinced her. Katie's watchfulness and her self-imposed task of bringing every suspicious person to justice was known to everybody in Sabinsport. It had long been known particularly well to the strange young man who had appeared in Reuben Cowder's office early in March and warned him of approaching changes in the force at his munition factory. Other things concerning Katie were known to this same young man, and one of them was that she had a room to rent on her first floor. The floor opening onto the upper level, ever since Mikey went away, had been rented by Mr. Max Dalberg. Downstairs, opening onto the lower level by a little side door, was an extra room which Katie had said recently for the first time to herself she would rent if she had a chance. She had not put out a shingle but she had told her neighbors, so it was not surprising that one morning when she was busy in the rectory that there should have been a knock at the door, a call for Mrs. Flaherty, an inquiry about a room to rent, and a bargain promptly made. Katie took to the applicant--a jolly, clean, keen-eyed American boy, older than Mikey but with something about him that suggested Mikey. Himself a grand fighter, too, Katie had said to herself. Her new tenant was John Barker, by name. "I'm only at home through the daytime, Mrs. Flaherty," he said. "I'm in the mines, an engineer, running night shifts. I won't be in before eight or half-past in the morning for I get my breakfast over there. I want a quiet place to sleep through the day, and I will be off by five in the afternoon. If you want any references I can give them, and here's a week's rent in advance." And Katie, to whom paper references meant little, and the look in a man's eye everything, had said, "It's all right, Mr. Barker, I will have the room ready to-night and you can come in in the morning. You will find the key with Mary O'Sullivan next door." And Katie that night, when she went home, made the little room clean and tidy, put the key to the outside door with Mary O'Sullivan, describing her new tenant with enthusiasm.