man; the younger seemed not to feel it—was happily interrupted by the advent of the lily-clad messenger.
Hastily retrieving his yellow-back, which he subjected to some furtive and occult manipulations, Mr. Vanney, after a few words, took his departure.
Banneker invited the newcomer to take the chair thus vacated. As he did so he brushed something to the floor and picked it up.
“Hello! What’s this? Looks like a hundred-bucker. Yours?” He held out the bill.
Banneker shook his head. “Your uncle left it.”
“It isn’t a habit of his,” replied the other.
“Give it to him for me, will you?”
“Certainly. Any message?”
“No.”
The newcomer grinned. “I see,” he said. “He’ll be bored when he gets this back. He isn’t a bad old bird, but he don’t savvy some things. So you turned him down, did you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he offer you a job and a chance to make your way in the world in one of his banks, beginning at ten-per?”
“No.”
“He will to-morrow.”
“I doubt it.”
The other gave a thought to the bill. “Perhaps you’re right. He likes em meek and obedient. He’d make a woolly lamb out of you. Most fellows would jump at the chance.”
“I won’t.”
“My name’s Herbert Cressey.” He handed the agent a card. “Philadelphia is my home, but my New York address is on there, too. Ever get East?”
“I’ve been to Chicago.”
“Chicago?” The other stared. “What’s that got to do with—Oh, I see. You’ll be coming to New York one of these days, though.”
“Maybe.”
“Sure as a gun. A chap that can handle a situation like you handled the wreck isn’t going to stick in a little sand-heap like this.”
“It suits me here.”
“No! Does it? I’d think you’d die of it. Well, when you do get East look me up, will you? I mean it; I’d like to see you.”
“All right.”
“And if there’s anything I can do for you any time, drop me a line.”
The sumptuous ripple and gleam of the young man’s faultless coat, registered upon Banneker’s subconscious memory as it had fallen at his feet, recalled itself to him.
“What store do you buy your clothes at?”
“Store?” Cressey did not smile. “I don’t buy ’em at a store. I have ’em made by a tailor. Mertoun, 505 Fifth Avenue.”
“Would he make me a suit?”
“Why, yes. I’ll give you a card to him and you go in there when you’re in New York and pick out what you want.”
“Oh! He wouldn’t make them and send them out here to me? Sears-Roebuck do, if you send your measure. They’re in Chicago.”
“I never had any duds built in Chicago, so I don’t know them. But I shouldn’t think Mertoun would want to fit a man he’d never seen. They like to do things right, at Mertoun’s. Ought to, too; they stick you enough for it.”
“How much?”
“Not much short of a hundred for a sack suit.”
Banneker was amazed. The choicest “made-to-measure” in his Universal Guide, “Snappy, fashionable, and up to the minute,” came to less than half of that.
His admiring eye fell upon his visitor’s bow-tie, faultless and underanged throughout the vicissitudes of that arduous day, and he yearned to know whether it was “made-up” or self-confected. Sears-Roebuck were severely impartial as between one practice and the other, offering a wide range in each variety. He inquired.
“Oh, tied it myself, of course,” returned Cressey. “Nobody wears the ready-made kind. It’s no trick to do it. I’ll show you, any time.”
They fell into friendly talk about the wreck.
It was ten-thirty when Banneker finished his much-interrupted writing. Going out to the portable house, he lighted an oil-stove and proceeded to make a molasses pie. He was due for a busy day on the morrow and might not find time to take the mile walk to the hotel for dinner, as was his general habit. With the store of canned goods derived from the mail-order catalogue, he could always make shift to live. Besides, he was young enough to relish keenly molasses pie and the manufacture of it. Having concluded his cookery in strict accordance with the rules set forth in the guide to this art, he laid it out on the sill to cool over night.
Tired though he was, his brain was too busy for immediate sleep. He returned to his den, drew out a book and began to read with absorption. That in which he now sought release and distraction was not the magnum opus of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck, but the work of a less practical and popular writer, being in fact the “Eve of St. Agnes,” by John Keats. Soothed and dreamy, he put out the lights, climbed to his living quarters above the office, and fell asleep. It was then eleven-thirty and his official day had terminated five hours earlier.
At one o’clock he arose and patiently descended the stairs again. Some one was hammering on the door. He opened without inquiry, which was not the part of wisdom in that country and at that hour. His pocket-flash gleamed on a thin young man in a black-rubber coat who, with head and hands retracted as far as possible from the pouring rain, resembled a disconsolate turtle with an insufficient carapace.
“I’m Gardner, of the Angelica City Herald,” explained the untimely visitor.
Banneker was surprised. That a reporter should come all the way from the metropolis of the Southwest to his wreck—he had already established proprietary interest in it—was gratifying. Furthermore, for reasons of his own, he was glad to see a journalist. He took him in and lighted up the office.
“Had to get a horse and ride to Manzanita to interview old Vanney and a couple of other big guys from the East. My first story’s on the wire,” explained the newcomer offhand. “I want some local-color stuff for my second day follow-up.”
“It must be hard to do that,” said Banneker interestedly, “when you haven’t seen any of it yourself.”
“Patchwork and imagination,” returned the other wearily. “That’s what I get special rates for. Now, if I’d had your chance, right there on the spot, with the whole stage-setting around one—Lordy! How a fellow could write that!”
“Not so easy,” murmured the agent. “You get confused. It’s a sort of blur, and when you come to put it down, little things that aren’t really important come up to the surface—”
“Put it down?” queried the other with a quick look. “Oh, I see. Your report for the company.”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“Do you write other things?” asked the reporter carelessly.
“Oh, just foolery.” The tone invited—at least it did not discourage—further inquiry. Mr. Gardner was bored. Amateurs who “occasionally write” were the bane of him who, having a signature of his own in the leading local paper, represented to the aspiring mind the gilded and lofty peaks of the unattainable. However he must play this youth as a source of material.
“Ever try for the papers?”
“Not yet. I’ve thought maybe I might get a chance sometime as a sort of local correspondent around here,” was the diffident