world-tour for the last. But the doggedness
which had hitherto been Broffin's best bid for genius in his profession
asserted itself as a ruling passion. Twenty minutes after having been
given his body-blow by the dean of the theological school he had
examined some specimens of Miss Sanborn's handwriting, had compared them
with the unsigned letter, and was back at the little railroad station
burning the wires to Kansas City in an attempt to find out the exact
sailing date of the missionary's steamer from San Francisco.

When the answer came he found that his margin of time was something of
the narrowest, but it was still a margin. By taking the first overland
train which could be reached and boarded, he might, barring more of the
ill-luck, arrive at San Francisco in time to overtake the young woman
whose handwriting was so like, and yet in some respects quite strikingly
unlike, that of the writer of the letter to Mr. Galbraith.

Under such conditions the long journey to the Pacific Coast was begun,
continued, and, in due course of time, ended. As if it had exhausted
itself in the middle passage, ill-luck held aloof, and Broffin's
overland train was promptly on time when it rolled into its terminal at
Oakland. An hour later he had crossed the bay and was in communication
with the steamship people. Though it was within a few hours of the China
steamer's sailing date, Miss Sanborn had not yet made her appearance,
and once more, though the subject this time was wholly innocent, Broffin
swore fluently.

Notwithstanding, after all these intermediate buffetings, it was only
the ultimate disappointment which was reserved for the man who had come
two thousand miles out of his way for a five-minute talk with a young
woman. Almost at the last moment he found her, and in the same moment
was made to realize that the similarity in handwriting was only a
similarity. Miss Sanborn had been a passenger on the _Belle Julie_,
boarding the steamboat at New Orleans and debarking at St. Louis. But
she had known nothing of the Bayou State Security robbery until she had
read of it in the newspapers; and one glance into the steadfast blue
eyes that met his without flinching convinced Broffin that once more he
had fired and missed.

Number Two in the list of seven being thus laboriously eliminated,
Broffin, to be utterly consistent, should have boarded the first train
for Minnesota. But inasmuch as three of the remaining five addresses
were w