The visitor passed through the doorway.
"Good evening, Carlin; I hoped you would still be up.

I stopped on the way down or I should have been here earlier." A man of sixty, with a ruddy, weather-beaten face set in a half-moon of gray whiskers, the ends tied under his chin, sprang to his feet.

"Ah! Is that you, Mr.Felix?
I been a-wonderin' where you been a-keepin' yourself.

Take this chair; it's more comfortable.

I was thinkin' somehow you might come in to-night, and so I took a shy at my bills to have somethin' to do.