At the same time the uniformed employees of the insurance patrol placed themselves in the doorways of the factory and Chief Trask came over to where Bruce was sitting with his horses and bade him start for home. As they drove slowly in the direction of the quarters they passed the tall man with the close cropped black beard. He eyed them sharply, as they went by, and as he turned his face, Bruce noticed what he had not observed before, namely, a long scar which ran obliquely across his chin. Just at this moment he heard one of the men on the truck behind him say to his fellow: “There’s that tall, ugly looking chap that used to come round to the quarters every once and a while, I haven’t seen him for six months now, and I don’t know that I want to see him again, for I never liked his looks.” Bruce eagerly turned his head for a final glimpse of the dark stranger, but he had disappeared. “Never mind,” he said to himself, “that face is fixed in my mind and I’ll never forget it. One of these days I’ll find out who that man is, and what he had to do with my father.” That afternoon he sat in his accustomed corner in the back room of the quarters, thinking over his day’s experience. He was very quiet and did not join in the conversation that was going on around him. He wanted to tell his friend, Weyman, about the tall stranger with the scar on his chin, and he would have done so, had it not been that he remembered Laura’s emphatic order not to allow any one but herself to share his secret. For fully half an hour he thought the matter over, and then determined, reluctantly it must be owned, not to say anything about it to Weyman, until he had obtained the young girl’s permission. And it was just at this stage of his investigations that he made his first serious blunder. If he had gone at once to his friend and told him about the man whom he had seen down among the Poles and Russians and Germans, in the tenement house quarter of the town, it would have made a great difference in his life. But he allowed himself to be influenced by a pretty, imperious, spoiled little girl, instead of by a quick-witted, sensible and devoted friend, with results which will be described in future chapters of this story. CHAPTER XII.