answered, lighting a cigar, and puffing away dubiously. "Nobody
knows. He's a mystery. He poses in the role. You'd better ask
Philip; it was he who brought him here."

"I met him accidentally in the street," Philip answered, with an
apologetic shrug, by no means well pleased at being thus held
responsible for all the stranger's moral and social vagaries. "It's
the merest chance acquaintance. I know nothing of his antecedents.
I--er--I lent him a bag, and he's fastened himself upon me ever
since like a leech, and come constantly to my sister's. But I
haven't the remotest idea who he is or where he hails from. He
keeps his business wrapped up from all of us in the profoundest
mystery."

"He's a gentleman, anyhow," the General put in with military
decisiveness. "How manly of him to acknowledge at once about the
cobbler being probably a near relation! Most men, you know,
Christy, would have tried to hide it; HE didn't for a second. He
admitted his ancestors had all been cobblers till quite a recent
period."

Philip was astonished at this verdict of the General's, for he
himself, on the contrary, had noted with silent scorn that very
remark as a piece of supreme and hopeless stupidity on Bertram's
part. No fellow can help having a cobbler for a grandfather, of
course: but he need not be such a fool as to volunteer any mention
of the fact spontaneously.

"Yes, I thought it bold of him," Monteith answered, "almost bolder
than was necessary; for he didn't seem to think we should be at all