ul
arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he
stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the
tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast
his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good
Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore.

A joyful party of four--two women and two men--fell upon him with
cries of delight. There was a dinner party on--where had he been for
a fortnight past?--what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded
and engulfed him--he must join them--tra la la--and the rest.

One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his
sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: "See
what I can do with him?" and added her queen's command to the
invitations.

"I leave you to imagine," said Morley, pathetically, "how it
desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of
the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at
8."

The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an
arc light down the frolicsome way.

Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and
laughing gleefully to himself. "'Front,'" he chanted under his
breath; "'front' does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it
in! Men, women and children--forgeries, water-and-salt lies--how
they all take it in!"

An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a
corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street
cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side.

"Stranger," said he, "excuse me for troubling you, but do you know
anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son, and
I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know
what I done with his street and number."

"I do not, sir," said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy
in them. "You had better apply to the police."

"The police!" said the old man. "I ain't done nothin' to call in the
police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story
house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could"--

"I told you I did not," said Morley, coldly. "I know no one by the
name of Smithers, and I advise you to"--

"Smothers not Smithers," interrupted the old man hopefully. "A
heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth
out, about five foot"--

"Oh, 'Smothers!'" exclaimed Morley. "Sol Smothers