Striving feebly as one who gathers up the shards and fragments after an explosion, Griswold remembered cloudily the supper of tasteless courses at the Hotel Chouteau, still less distinctly, a drive through the streets to a great, echoing railway station, a glare of lights too painful to be borne, and, last of all, an overpowering weariness shutting down upon him like a sudden closing in of darkness become thick and stifling.

Afterward there were vague impressions, momentary breaches in the wall of inclosing darkness when he had realized that he was curiously helpless, and that he was still on the train going somewhere, though he could not remember where. In one of these intervals a woman had stood beside him, and he seemed to remember that she had put her cool hand on his forehead.

Of the transition from the train to the bed in the upper room at Mereside, he recalled nothing, though the personalities of two strangers, the doctor and the nurse, obtruded themselves frequently in the later phases of the troubled dream, like figures in a shadow pantomime. Also, that suggestion of the presence of the woman with the cool palm became self-repeating; and finally, when complete consciousness returned, the dream impression was still so sharply defined that he was not surprised to find her standing at his bedside.

He did not recognize her. The memory of his supper companions of the Hotel Chouteau cafÉ was deeply buried under the dream dÉbris, and the present moment was full of mild bewilderment. Yet the friendliness in her eyes seemed to shine out of some past which ought to be remembered.

Before he could frame any of the queries which came thronging to the door of the returned consciousness, she smiled and shook her head and forbade him.

"No, you mustn't talk," she said, with gentle authority. "It's the doctor's orders. By and by, when you are stronger, you may ask all the questions you please; but not now."

He wagged his head on the pillow. "Can't I even ask where I am?" he begged.

"Since you have asked, I'll tell you that much. You are in Wahaska, Minnesota, in the house of your friends; and you have nothing to do but to get well as fast and as comfortably as you can."

Her voice was even more remindful than her face of that elusive past which ought to be remembered, and he closed his eyes to try to recall it. When he opened them again, she was gone and her place was taken by one of the figures of the dream; a man with a thick mop of fair hair and a face of blank good-nature, and whose store of English seemed to be comprised in a single sentence: "Ja, ja; Hae bane poorty vell, t'ank yo'."

Later in the day the doctor came; and when the professional requirements were satisfied, Griswold learned the bare facts of his succoring. It was characteristic of the Griswold of other days that the immense obligation under which the Griersons had placed him made him gasp and perspire afresh.

"Who ever heard of such a thing, doctor?" he protested weakly. And then: "How am I ever going to repay them?"

Dr. Farnham was crisply explicit. "You may leave Mr. Grierson out of your problem. Miss Margery is an only child, and if she sees fit to turn Mereside into a temporary hospital, he is abundantly able to indulge her."

"Then I am indebted to the daughter, alone?"

"Entirely, I should say."

Griswold looked long and earnestly at the face of his professional adviser. It was a good face, clearly lined, benevolent; and, above all, trustworthy.

"Tell me one thing more, doctor, if you can. What was the motive? Was it just heavenly good-heartedness?—or——"

The doctor's smile was the least possible shade wintry.

"When you have lived a few years longer in this world of ours, you will not probe too deeply into motives; you will take the deed as the sufficient exponent of the prompting behind it. If I say so much, you will understand that I am not impugning Miss Grierson's motives. There are times when she is the good angel of everybody in sight."

"And this is one of the times?" persisted the analyst.

"We shall say that this is one of the times: say it and stick to it, Mr.——"

The pause after the courtesy title was significant, and Griswold filled it promptly. "Griswold—Kenneth Griswold. Do you mean to say that you haven't known my name, doctor?"

"We have not. We took the Good Samaritan's privilege and ransacked your belongings—Miss Margery and I—thinking that there might be relatives or friends who should be notified."

"And you found nothing?" queried the sick man, a cold fear gripping at his heart.

"Absolutely nothing to tell us who you were; no cards, letters, or memoranda of any kind. The conclusion was obvious: some one had taken advantage of your illness on the train and had picked your pockets."

Griswold moistened his lips and swallowed hard. "There were two suit-cases: were they lost?"

"No; they are here."

"And you found nothing in them?"

"Nothing but clothing and your toilet tools, a pistol, and a typewritten book manuscript bearing no signature."

Griswold turned his face away and shut his eyes. Once more his stake in the game of life was gone.

"There was another package of—of papers in one of the grips," he said, faintly; "quite a large package wrapped in brown paper."

"Valuables?" queried the doctor, sympathetically curious.

"Y-yes; rather valuable."

"We found nothing but the manuscript. Could any one else make use of the papers you speak of?"

Griswold was too feeble to prevaricate successfully.

"There was money in the package," he said, leaving the physician to infer what he pleased.

"Ah; then you were robbed. It's a pity we didn't know it at the time. It is pretty late to begin looking for the thief now, I'm afraid."

"Quite too late," said Griswold monotonously.

The doctor rose to go.

"Don't let the material loss depress you, Mr. Griswold," he said, with encouraging kindliness. "The one loss that couldn't have been retrieved is a danger past for you now, I'm glad to say. Be cheerful and patient, and we'll soon have you a sound man again. You have a magnificent constitution and fine recuperative powers; otherwise we should have buried you within a week of your arrival."

It was not until after the doctor had gone that Griswold was able to face the new misfortune with anything like a sober measure of equanimity. Imaginative to the degree which facilely transforms the suppositional into the real, he was still singularly free from superstition. Nevertheless, all the legends clustering about the proverbial slipperiness of ill-gotten gains paraded themselves insistently. It was only by the supremest effort of will that he could push them aside and address himself to the practical matter of getting well. That was the first thing to be considered; with or without money, he must relieve the Griersons of their self-assumed burden at the earliest possible moment.

This was the thought with which he sank into the first natural sleep of convalescence. But during the days which followed, Margery was able to modify it without dulling the keen edge of his obligation. What perfect hospitality could do was done, without ostentation, with the exact degree of spontaneity which made it appear as a service rendered to a kinsman. It was one of the gifts of the daughter of men to be able to ignore all the middle distances between an introduction and a friendship; and by the time Griswold was strong enough to let the big, gentle Swede plant him in a Morris chair in the sun-warmed bay-window, the friendship was a fact accomplished.

"Do you know, you're the most wonderful person I have ever known?" he said to Margery, on the first of the sunning days when she had come to perch in the window-seat opposite his chair.

"It's propinquity," she laughed. "You haven't seen any other woman for days and weeks. Wait until you are strong enough to come down to one of my 'evenings.'"

"No, it isn't propinquity," he denied.

"Then it's the unaccustomed. You are from the well-behaved East. There are some people even here in Wahaska who will tell you that I have never properly learned how to behave."

"Your looking-glass will tell you why they say that," he said gravely.

Her smile showed the perfect rows of white teeth. "You are recovering rapidly, Mr. Kenneth; don't you think so? Or was that only a little return of the fever?"

He brushed the bit of mockery aside. "I want to be serious to-day—if you'll let me. There are a lot of things I'd like to know."

"About Wahaska?"

"About you, first. Where did we meet?—before I came out of the fever woods and saw you standing by the bed?"

"We didn't 'meet,' in the accepted meaning of the word. My father and I happened to sit at your table one evening in the Hotel Chouteau, in St. Louis."

"Ah; I knew there was a day back of the other days. Do you believe in destiny?"

She nodded brightly. "Sometimes I do; when it brings things out the way I want them to come out."

"I've often wondered," he went on musingly. "Think of it: somewhere back in the past you took the first step in a path which was to lead you to that late supper in the Chouteau. Somewhere in my past I took the first step in the crooked trail that was to lead me there."

"Well?" she encouraged.

"The paths crossed—and I am your poor debtor," he finished. "I can never hope to repay you and your father for what you have done."

"Oh, yes you can," she asserted lightly. "You can pass it along to the man farther down. Forget it, and tell me what you want to know about Wahaska."

"First, I'd like to know my doctor's name."

"The idea!" she exclaimed. "Hasn't there been anybody to introduce you? He is Wahaska's best-beloved 'Doctor Bertie'; otherwise Doctor Herbert C. Farnham."

"Doctor Farnham?—not Miss Char——" He bit the name in two in the middle, but the mischief was done.

"Yes; Charlotte's father," was the calm reply. Then: "Where did you meet Miss Farnham?"

"I haven't met her," he protested instantly; "she—she doesn't know me from Adam. But I have seen her, and I happened to learn her name and her home address."

Miss Margery's pretty face took on an expression of polite disinterest, but behind the mask the active brain was busily fitting the pegs of deduction into their proper holes. Her involuntary guest did not know the father; therefore he must have seen the daughter while she was away from home. Charlotte Farnham had been South, at Pass Christian, and doubtless in New Orleans. The convalescent had also been in New Orleans, as his money packet with its Bayou State Security labels sufficiently testified.

Miss Grierson got up to draw one of the window shades. It had become imperative that she should have time to think and an excuse for hiding her face from the eyes which seemed to be trying masterfully to read her inmost thoughts.

"You think it is strange that I should know Miss Farnham's name and address without having met her?" Griswold asked, when the pause had become a keen agony.

Miss Grierson's rejoinder was flippant. "Oh, no; she is pretty enough to account for a stranger thing than that."

"She is more than pretty," said Griswold, impulsively; "she has the beauty of those who have high ideals, and live up to them."

"I thought you said you didn't know her," was the swift retort.

"I said I hadn't met her, and that she doesn't know me."

"Oh," said the small fitter of deduction pegs; and afterward she talked, and made the convalescent talk, pointedly of other things.

This occurred in the forenoon of a pleasant day in May. In the afternoon of the same day, Miss Grierson's trap was halted before the door of the temporary quarters of the Wahaska Public Library. Raymer saw the trap and crossed the street, remembering—what he would otherwise have forgotten—that his sister had asked him to get a book on orchids.

Miss Margery was in the reference room, wading absently through the newspaper files. She nodded brightly when Raymer entered—and was not in the least dust-blinded by the library card in his hand.

"You are just in time to help me," she told him. "Do you remember the story of that daring bank robbery in New Orleans a few weeks ago?—the one in which a man made the president draw a check and get it cashed for him?"

Raymer did remember it, chiefly because he had talked about it at the time with Jasper Grierson, and had wondered curiously how the president of the Farmers' and Merchants' would deport himself under like conditions.

"Do you remember the date?" she asked.

Since it was tied to his first business interview with Grierson pÈre, Raymer was able to recall the date, approximately, and together they turned the file of the Pioneer Press until they came to the number containing the Associated Press story of the crime. It was fairly circumstantial; the young woman at the teller's window figured in it, and there was a sketchy description of the robber.

"If you should meet the man face to face, would you recognise him from the description?" she flashed up at Raymer.

"Not in a thousand years," he confessed. "Would you?"

"No; not from the description," she admitted. Then she passed to a matter apparently quite irrelevant.

"Didn't I see Miss Farnham's return noticed in the Wahaskan the other day?"

With Charlotte's father a daily visitor at Mereside, it seemed incredible that Miss Grierson had not heard of the daughter's home-coming. But Raymer answered in good faith.

"You may have seen it some time ago. She and Miss Gilman have been home for three or four weeks."

"Somebody said they were coming up the river by boat; did they?"

"Yes, all the way from New Orleans."

"That must have been delightful, if they were fortunate enough to get a good boat. I've been told that the table is simply impossible on some of them."

"So it is. But they came up as far as St. Louis on one of the Anchor Lines—the Belle Julie—and even Miss Gilman admits that the accommodations were excellent."

She nodded absently and began to turn the leaves of the newspaper file. Raymer took it as his dismissal and went to the desk to get the orchid book. When he looked in again on his way to the street, Miss Grierson had gone, leaving the file of the Pioneer Press open on the reading desk. Almost involuntarily he glanced at the first-page headings, thrilling to a little shock of surprise when one of them proved to be the caption of another Associated Press despatch giving a twenty-line story of the capture and second escape of the Bayou State Security robber on the levee at St. Louis.

The reading of the bit of stale news impressed him curiously. Why had Miss Margery interested herself in the details of the New Orleans bank robbery? Why—with no apparent special reason—should she have remembered it at all? or remembering it, have known where to look for the two newspaper references?

Raymer left the library speculating vaguely on the unaccountable tangents at which the feminine mind could now and then fly off from the well-defined circle of the conventionally usual. On rare occasions his mother or Gertrude did it, and he had long since learned the folly of trying to reduce the small problem to terms of known quantities masculine.

"Just the same, I'd like to know why, this time," he said to himself, as he crossed the street to the Manufacturers' Club. "Miss Grierson isn't at all the person to do things without an object."