ercantile
records, he certainly--those guessed whose books he had extricated
from confusion--had handled money and money values in days before his
unexplained coming to New Orleans. Yet a close observer would have
noticed that he grasped these tasks only as problems, treated them in
their mathematical and enigmatical aspect, and solved them without any
appreciation of their concrete values. When they were done he felt less
personal interest in them than in the architectural beauty of the
store-front, whose window-shutters he had never helped to close without
a little heart-leap of pleasure.

But, standing thus, and looking in at the machinery, a man touched him
on the shoulder.

"Good-morning," said the man. He wore a pleasant air. It seemed to say,
"I'm nothing much, but you'll recognize me in a moment; I'll wait." He
was short, square, solid, beardless; in years, twenty-five or six. His
skin was dark, his hair almost black, his eyebrows strong. In his mild
black eyes you could see the whole Mediterranean. His dress was coarse,
but clean; his linen soft and badly laundered. But under all the rough
garb and careless, laughing manner was visibly written again and again
the name of the race that once held the world under its feet.

"You don't remember me?" he added, after a moment.

"No," said Richling, pleasantly, but with embarrassment. The man waited
another moment, and suddenly Richling recalled their earlier meeting.
The man, representing a wholesale confectioner in one of the smaller
cities up the river, had bought some cordials and syrups of the house
whose books Richling had last put in order.

"Why, yes I do, too!" said Richling. "You left your pocket-book in my
care for two or three days; your own private money, you said."

"Yes." The man laughed softly. "Lost that money. Sent it to the boss.
Boss died--store seized--everything gone." His English was well
pronounced, but did not escape a pretty Italian accent, too delicate for
the printer's art.

"Oh! that was too bad!" Richling laid his hand upon an awning-post and
twined an arm and leg around it as though he were a vine. "I--I forget
your name."

"Ristofalo. Raphael Ristofalo. Yours is Richling. Yes, knocked me flat.
Not got cent in world." The Italian's low, mellow laugh claimed
Richling's admiration.

"Why, when did that happen?" he asked.

"Yes'day," replied the other, still laughing.

"And how are you going to provide for the future?" Richlin