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