rent collector was just a shade
more prompt than the rising sun. Yes, most certainly he would give Bruce
the company's address and it was no trouble at all.

He was a fascinating person to Bruce, who would have liked to prolong
the conversation, but the disheveled customer in the chair was growing
restless, so he took the address, thanked him, and went out wondering
whimsically if through any cataclysm of nature he should turn up a
hair-dresser, sweet-scented, redolent of tonique, smelling of pomade,
how it would seem to be curling a lady's hair?

Back in the moderate-priced hotel where he had established himself, he
set about interviewing by telephone the Naudains whose names appeared in
the directory. It was a nerve-racking task to Bruce, who was unfamiliar
with the use of the telephone, and those of the name with whom he
succeeded in getting in communication seemed singularly busy folk,
indifferent to the amenities and entirely uninterested in his quest. But
he persisted until he had exhausted the list.

Since there was no more to do that night, in fact no more to do at all
if the trust company failed him, he went to bed: but everything was too
strange for him to sleep well.

A sense of the nearness of people made him uneasy, and the room seemed
close although there was no steam and the window was wide open. The
noises of the street disturbed him; they were poor substitutes for the
plaintive music of the wind among the pines. His bed was far too soft;
he believed he could have slept if only he had had his mattress of
pine-boughs and his bear-grass pillow. The only advantage that his
present quarters had over his cabin was the hot and cold water. It
really was convenient, he told himself with a grin, to have a spring in
the room.

The street lamp made his room like day and as he lay wide-eyed in the
white light listening to the clatter of hoofs over the pavement, he
recalled his childish ambition to buy up all the old horses in the world
when he was big--he smiled now at the size of the contract--all the
horses he could find that were stiff and sore, and half dead on their
feet from straining on preposterous loads; the horses that were lashed
and cut and cursed because in their wretched old age they could not step
out like colts. He meant to turn them into a pasture where the grass was
knee-deep and they could lie with their necks outstretched in the sun
and rest their tired legs.

He had explained the plan to