this satchel up to number five."

The boy went his way, eying the labels respectfully and with some awe.
This was the third of its kind he had ported up-stairs in the past
twenty-four hours.

Fitzgerald cast an idle glance at the loungers. There were half a
dozen of them, some of them playing cards and some displaying talent on
a pool table, badly worn and beer-stained. There was nothing
distinctive about any of them, excepting the little man who was reading
an evening paper, and the only distinctive thing about him was a pair
of bright eyes. Behind their gold-rimmed spectacles they did not waver
under Fitzgerald's scrutiny; so the latter dismissed the room and its
company from his mind and proceeded into dinner. As he was late, he
dined alone on mildly warm chicken, greasy potatoes, and muddy coffee.
He was used often to worse fare than this, and no complaint was even
thought of. After he had changed his linen he took the road to the
house at the top of the hill. Now, then, what sort of an affair was
this going to be, such as would bend a girl of her bearing to speak to
him on the street? Moreover, at a moment when he was playing a
grown-up child's game? She had known that he was prevaricating when he
had stated that he represented a charitable organization; and he knew
that she knew he knew it. What, then? It could not be a joke; women
never rise to such extravagant heights. Pirates and treasures; he
wouldn't have been surprised at all had Old Long John Silver hobbled
out from behind any one of those vine-grown fences, and demanded his
purse.

The street was dim, and more than once he stumbled over a loose board
in the wooden walk. If the admiral had been the right kind of
philanthropist he would have furnished stone. But then, it was one
thing to give a country town something and another to force the town
council into accepting it. The lamp-posts, also of wood, stood
irregularly apart, often less than a hundred feet, and sometimes more,
lighting nothing but their immediate vicinity. Fitzgerald could see
the lamps, plainly, but could separate none of the objects round or
beneath. That is why he did not see the face of the man who passed him
in a hurry. He never forgot a face, if it were a man's; his only
difficulty was in placing it at once. Up to this time one woman
resembled another; feminine faces made no particular impression on his
memory. He would have remembered the face of the man who ha