Part 2 - Chapter 2

The Bodymaster

McMurdo was a man who made his mark quickly. Wherever he was the
folk around soon knew it. Within a week he had become infinitely
the most important person at Shafter's. There were ten or a
dozen boarders there; but they were honest foremen or commonplace
clerks from the stores, of a very different calibre from the
young Irishman. Of an evening when they gathered together his
joke was always the readiest, his conversation the brightest, and
his song the best. He was a born boon companion, with a
magnetism which drew good humour from all around him.

And yet he showed again and again, as he had shown in the railway
carriage, a capacity for sudden, fierce anger, which compelled
the respect and even the fear of those who met him. For the law,
too, and all who were connected with it, he exhibited a bitter
contempt which delighted some and alarmed others of his fellow
boarders.

>From the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that
the daughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that
he had set eyes upon her beauty and her grace. He was no
backward suitor. On the second day he told her that he loved
her, and from then onward he repeated the same story with an
absolute disregard of what she might say to discourage him.

"Someone else?" he would cry. "Well, the worse luck for someone
else! Let him look out for himself! Am I to lose my life's
chance and all my heart's desire for someone else? You can keep
on saying no, Ettie: the day will come when you will say yes, and
I'm young enough to wait."

He was a dangerous suitor, with his glib Irish tongue, and his
pretty, coaxing ways. There was about him also that glamour of
experience and of mystery which attracts a woman's interest, and
finally her love. He could talk of the sweet valleys of County
Monaghan from which he came, of the lovely, distant island, the
low hills and green meadows of which seemed the more beautiful
when imagination viewed them from this place of grime and snow.

Then he was versed in the life of the cities of the North, of
Detroit, and the lumber camps of Michigan, and finally of
Chicago, where he had worked in a planing mill. And afterwards
came the hint of romance, the feeling that strange things had
happened to him in that great city, so strange and so intimate
that they might not be spoken of. He spoke wistfully of a sudden
leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world,
ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes
gleaming with pity and with sympathy--those two qualities which
may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.

McMurdo had obtained a temporary job as bookkeeper for he was a
well-educated man.