"Glad to see you, Mr. Wray," said the clerk, handing him the pen. "I am sorry I can't give you a room to yourself, but I can put you a bed in your son's room." The pen was poised uncertainly--the gentleman with the side-whiskers stared. "Your son got in last night," explained the clerk. The gentleman still silently stared. He had a close, compact mouth, a cautious mouth, and the lips were now compressed with an expression of waiting incommunicativeness. He evidently had not expected to be confronted with a ready-made family. The clerk surprised in turn cast on him a glance of keen intentness. In these strenuous times every stranger in the town was liable to suspicion as a Confederate emissary. "I was not on duty, myself, but I thought I saw--ah--here it is," turning the page of the register, "John Wray, Junior, Manchester, England." For one moment the portly gentleman gazed at the signature as if dumfounded. Then with an air of ready recognition he justified his previous manifestations of extreme surprise by explaining the mistake of the clerk as to the matter of identity. "Oh, aw, a distant relative," he said, at last. "Ah, aw,--he is the son of a cousin of the same name as mine, 'John Wray.' The younger man is to be associated with me in business. What room? Number ninety?" And as he was assigned to that haven he took the pen and wrote, "John Wray, Manchester, England." Thus it was that, awakened by the brisk tap at the door, Julius, leaning out of bed, turned the key, and reached out for the pitcher of ice water for which, being warm and thirsty, he had a drowsy impression that he had rung the bell. Perceiving his mistake, and lifting himself on his elbow, Julius beheld entering this blond and robust stranger, an inexplicable apparition, too solid for a spectre, too prosaic for a fancy. The visitor stood, when the door had closed, gazing silently down at the recumbent figure, while Julius, amazed at the form which his Nemesis had taken, gazed up silently and lugubriously at the intruder. All the methods of Mr. John Wray were in conformity with his portly rotundity, his slow respectability, his unimaginative commercialism. The young man found speech first. "Why this unexpected pleasure?" he asked ceremoniously, but with a satiric inflection. "Sorry to intrude, I'm sure," said the elder. "But my name is John Wray of Manchester, England." The skies had fallen on Julius. He strove to recover himself. "And do you like it?" he asked vacuously. "_You_ seemed to like it well enough to register it." "With a 'Junior,' if you please." The other fixed him with a stare of round blue eyes. "I think I understand you, sir." "Very possibly," said poor Julius. "I am not very deep." He was thinking that this was doubtless a military detective, a very usual factor for ferreting out schemes, obnoxious to the Federal government and in aid of the Confederacy. He determined to hold hard and sell his life dear.