When the Governor's eyes came back to Mike Murphy's face, they rested a moment on the grizzled red hair, and a smile softened the lines of his mouth.

“Mike,” he said, “I believe you used to give me a drubbing about once every day.”

The old Irishman moved uneasily, and his hands played nervously with the rim of his hat. He drew his feet under his chair, and moved his lips without speaking. He thought of that last fierce battle, when the Governor had fallen with a bleeding nose, and he shifted his eyes from spot to spot on the soft carpet. He felt as does a mouse when the cat plays with it.

The Governor turned to Father Maurice.

“Father,” he said, “I do not often allow myself a personal indulgence, but I have an unsettled score with Mike. I shall settle it now. I am going to pardon that young man.”

Two tears fell from the priest's eyes and rolled slowly into the white forest of his beard. Mike Murphy stared straight before him, while his fingers felt vaguely for the rim of the hat that had fallen from his hands.

“Go home, Mike,” said the Governor gently. “Go home and tell the wife and the mother.” When his petitioners had departed, the Governor sat long in the reception room, thinking of the old days. When he opened his watch it was not to note the hour, but to look on a woman's likeness; and he crossed his arms on the desk and buried his face in them. The old days had given him much that the later years had stolen from him. He sighed and lifted his head.

“Poor old Mike!” he said. “I'm square with him at last. I wonder why he took my part that day?” And he wearily climbed the stair to his lonely room.

He did not know that when Red Head went home that noon, nearly fifty years before, he had found Mrs. Murphy cutting out a pair of corduroy breeches.