and how he could find her. He could not drive her from his mind.

Meantime he had proceeded slowly on his way. Suddenly a benevolent, white-bearded man halted him, with a deprecating gesture. “Excuse me, sir,” he began, “but your hat——”

Orme lifted his straw hat from his head. A glance showed him that it was disfigured by a great blotch of black grease. He had held his hat in his hand while talking to the girl, and it must have touched her car at a point where the axle of the dray had rubbed. So this was his one memento of the incident.

He thanked the stranger, and walked to a near-by hatter’s, where a ready clerk set before him hats of all styles. He selected one quickly and left his soiled hat to be cleaned and sent home later.

Offering a ten-dollar bill in payment, he received in change a five-dollar bill and a silver dollar. He gave the coin a second glance. It was the first silver dollar that he had handled for some time, for he seldom visited the West.

“There’s no charge for the cleaning,” said the clerk, noting down Orme’s name and address, and handing the soiled hat to the cash-boy.

Orme, meantime, was on the point of folding the five-dollar bill to put it into his pocket-book. Suddenly he looked at it intently. Written in ink across the face of it, were the words:

The writing was apparently a hurried scrawl, but the letters were large and quite legible. They appeared to have been written on an uneven surface, for there were several jogs and breaks in the writing, as if the pen had slipped.

“This is curious,” remarked Orme.

The clerk blinked his watery eyes and looked at the bill in Orme’s hand. “Oh, yes, sir,” he explained. “I remember that. The gentleman who paid it in this morning called our attention to it.”

“If he’s the man who wrote this, he probably doesn’t know that there’s a law against defacing money.”

“But it’s perfectly good, isn’t it?” inquired the clerk. “If you want another instead——”

“Oh, no,” laughed Orme. “The banks would take it.”

“But, sir——” began the clerk.

“I should like to keep it. If I can’t get rid of it, I’ll bring it back. It’s a hoax or an endless chain device or something of the sort. I’d like to find out.”

He looked again at the writing. Puzzles and problems always interested him, especially if they seemed to involve some human story.

“Very well,” said the clerk, “I’ll remember that you have it, Mr.——” he peered at the name he had set down—“Mr. Orme.”

Leaving the hatter’s, Orme turned back on State Street, retracing his steps. It was close to the dinner hour, and the character of the street crowds had changed. The shoppers had disappeared. Suburbanites were by this time aboard their trains and homeward bound. The street was thronged with hurrying clerks and shop-girls, and the cars were jammed with thousands more, all of them thinking, no doubt, of the same two things—something to eat and relaxation.

What a hive it was, this great street! And how scant the lives of the great majority! Working, eating, sleeping, marrying and given in marriage, bearing children and dying—was that all? “But growing, too,” said Orme to himself. “Growing, too.” Would this be the sum of his own life—that of a worker in the hive? It came to him with something of an inner pang that thus far his scheme of things had included little more. He wondered why he was now recognizing this scantiness, this lack in his life.

He came out of his revery to find himself again at the Madison Street corner. Again he seemed to see that beautiful girl in the car, and to hear the music of her voice.

How could he best set about to find her? She might be, like himself, a visitor in the city. But there was the touring-car. Well, she might have run in from one of the suburbs. He could think of no better plan than to call that evening on the Wallinghams and describe the unknown to Bessie and try to get her assistance. Bessie would divine the situation, and she would guy him unmercifully, he knew; but he would face even that for another glimpse of the girl of the car.

And at that moment he was startled by a sharp explosion. He looked to the street. There was the black car, bumping along with one flat tire. The girl threw on the brakes and came to a stop.

In an instant Orme was in the street. If he thought that she would not remember him, her first glance altered the assumption, for she looked down at him with a ready smile and said: “You see, I do need you again, after all.”

As for Orme, he could think of nothing better to say than simply, “I am glad.” With that he began to unfasten the spare tire.

“I shall watch you with interest,” she went on. “I know how to run a car—though you might not think it—but I don’t know how to repair one.”

“That’s a man’s job anyway,” said Orme, busy now with the jack, which was slowly raising the wheel from the pavement.

“Shall I get out?” she asked. “Does my weight make any difference?”

“Not at all,” said Orme; but, nevertheless, she descended to the street and stood beside him while he worked. “I didn’t know there were all those funny things inside,” she mused.

Orme laughed. Her comment was vague, but to him it was enough just to hear her voice. He had got the wheel clear of the street and was taking off the burst tire.

“We seem fated to meet,” she said.

Orme looked up at her. “I hope you won’t think me a cad,” he said, “if I say that I hope we may meet many times.”

Her little frown warned him that she had misunderstood.

“Do you happen to know the Tom Wallinghams?” he asked.

Her smile returned. “I know a Tom Wallingham and a Bessie Wallingham.”

“They’re good friends of mine. Don’t you think that they might introduce us?”

“They might,” she vouchsafed, “if they happened to see us both at the same time.”

Orme returned to his task. The crowd that always gathers was now close about them, and there was little opportunity for talk. He finished his job neatly, and stowed away the old tire.

She was in the car before he could offer to help her. “Thank you again,” she said.

“If only you will let me arrange it with the Wallinghams,” he faltered.

“I will think about it.” She smiled.

He felt that she was slipping away. “Give me some clue,” he begged.

“Where is your spirit of romance?” she railed at him; then apparently relenting: “Perhaps the next time we meet——”

Orme groaned. With a little nod like that which had dismissed him at the time of his first service to her, she pulled the lever and the car moved away.

Tumult in his breast, Orme walked on. He watched the black car thread its way down the street and disappear around a corner. Then he gave himself over to his own bewildering reflections, and he was still busy with them when he found himself at the entrance of the Père Marquette. He had crossed the Rush Street bridge and found his way up to the Lake Shore Drive almost without realizing whither he was going.

Orme had come to Chicago, at the request of Eastern clients, to meet half-way the owners of a Western mining property. When he registered at the Annex, he found awaiting him a telegram saying that they had been detained at Denver and must necessarily be two days late. Besides the