me when I registered at the hotel."

Mrs. Brashear stared, then smiled. "A hotel is different. Where are you
stopping?"

"At the St. Denis."

"A very nice place. Who directed you here?"

"No one. I strolled around until I found a street I liked, and looked
around until I found a house I liked. The card in the window--"

"Of course. Well, Mr. Banneker, for the protection of the house I must
have references."

"References? You mean letters from people?"

"Not necessarily. Just a name or two from whom I can make inquiries. You
have friends, I suppose."

"No."

"Your family--"

"I haven't any."

"Then the people in the place where you work. What is your business, by
the way?"

"I expect to go on a newspaper."

"Expect?" Mrs. Brashear stiffened in defense of the institution. "You
have no place yet?"

He answered not her question, but her doubt. "As far as that is
concerned, I'll pay in advance."

"It isn't the financial consideration," she began loftily--"alone," she
added more honestly. "But to take in a total stranger--"

Banneker leaned forward to her. "See here, Mrs. Brashear; there's
nothing wrong about me. I don't get drunk. I don't smoke in bed. I'm
decent of habit and I'm clean. I've got money enough to carry me.
Couldn't you take me on my say-so? Look me over."

Though it was delivered with entire gravity, the speech provoked a tired
and struggling smile on the landlady's plain features. She looked.

"Well?" he queried pleasantly. "What do you think? Will you take a
chance?"

That suppressed motherliness which, embodying the unformulated desire to
look after and care for others, turns so many widows to taking lodgers,
found voice in Mrs. Brashear's reply:

"You've had a spell of sickness, haven't you?"

"No," he said, a little sharply. "Where did you get that idea?"

"Your eyes look hot."

"I haven't been sleeping very well. That's all."

"Too bad. You've had a loss, maybe," she ventured sympathetically.

"A loss? No.... Yes. You might call it a loss. You'll take me, then?"

"You can move in right away," said Mrs. Brashear recklessly.

So the Brashear rooming-house took into its carefully guarded interior
the young and unknown Mr. Banneker--who had not been sleeping well. Nor
did he seem to be sleeping well in his new quarters, since his light was
to be seen glowing out upon the quiet street until long after midnight;
yet he was usually up betimes, often even before the moving sp