n hour of his arrival, was a teacher of German whose
difficulties with the English language immediately eliminated her from
the diminishing equation. Broffin got away from the voluble little
Berliner as expeditiously as possible and hastened back to the railway
station. Kansas came next in his itinerary, and a westbound train was
due to leave in a few minutes.

It was here again that fate mocked him. Arriving at the station, he
found that the westbound train was an hour late; also, that within the
hour there would be a fast train to the north, with good connections for
Wahaska. Once more he stumbled and fell into the valley of indecision. A
dozen times during the forty-five minutes of grace he was on the point
of changing his route; nay, more; at the last minute, when the caller
had announced the northern train, he took a gambler's chance and spun a
coin--heads for the north and tails for the west. The twirling
half-dollar slipped from his fingers and rolled under one of the
stationary seats in the waiting-room. Broffin got down on his hands and
knees to grope for it, and while he was groping the chance to take the
northbound "Limited" was lost. Moreover, when he finally found the coin
it was standing upright in a crack in the floor.

Having now no alternative to distract him, he held to his original plan
and was soon speeding westward toward the Kansan experiment-station. For
two full days of twenty-four hours each he fought as only a determined
man and a good traveller could fight to cover a distance which should
have been traversed in something less than half of the time. Washouts,
blocked tracks, missed connections, all these got in the way; and it was
not until late in the afternoon of the third day out from Terre Haute
that he was set down at the small station which serves the needs of the
Kansas university town.

Having had himself conveyed quickly to the university, which was given
as the address of the Miss Sanborn whose name stood second in his list,
he learned how shrewd a blow his implacable ill-luck had dealt him in
making him the victim of so many delays. Miss Sanborn, it appeared, had
been fitting herself at the denominational school to go out as a
missionary. And some twelve hours before his arrival she had started on
her long journey to the antipodes, going by way of San Francisco and the
Pacific Mail.

Another man might have taken the more easily reached addresses in the
list, leaving the appalling