assengers from the lately met northbound train.

Griswold walked on until he was stopped by the sidewalk-blocking group
of freshly arrived travellers pausing to identify their luggage as it
was handed down from the top of the omnibus. Alertly watchful, he
quickly recognized Broffin among the porch loungers, and saw him leave
his tilted chair to saunter toward the steps. Then the fateful thing
happened. One of the luggage-sorters, a clean-limbed, handsome young
fellow with boyish eyes and a good-natured grin, wheeled suddenly and
gripped him.

"Why, Griswold, old man!--well, I'll be dogged! Who on the face of the
earth would ever have thought of finding you here? So this is where you
came up, after the long, deep, McGinty dive, is it?" Then to one of his
fellow travellers: "Hold on a minute, Johnson; I want you to shake hands
with an old newspaper pal of mine from New York, Mr. Kenneth Griswold.
Kenneth, this is Mr. Beverly Johnson, of the Bayou State Security Bank,
in New Orleans."

Thus Bainbridge, sometime star reporter for the _Louisianian_, turning
up at the climaxing instant to prove the crowded condition of an
over-narrow world, much as Matthew Broffin had once turned up on the
after-deck of the coastwise steamer _Adelantado_ to prove it to him.

While Griswold, with every nerve on edge, was acknowledging the
introduction which he could by no means avoid, Broffin drew nearer. From
the porch steps he could both see and hear. Bainbridge, cheerfully
loquacious, continued to do most of the talking. He was telling Griswold
of the streak of good luck which had snatched him out of a reporter's
berth in the South to make him night editor of one of the St. Paul
dailies. Johnson was merely an onlooker. Broffin's eyes searched the
teller's face. Thus far it was a blank--a rather bored blank.

"And you are on your way to St. Paul now?" Griswold said to the
newspaper man. Broffin, whose ears were skilfully attuned to all the
tone variations in the voice of evasion, thought he detected a quaver of
anxious impatience in the half-absent query.

"Yes; I was going on through to-night, but Johnson, here, stumped me to
stop over. He said I might be able to get a news story out of his sick
president," Bainbridge rattled on. "Ever meet Mr. Galbraith? He is the
bank president who was held up last spring, you remember; fine old
Scotch gentleman of the Walter-Scott brand."

"When did you leave New Orleans?" Griswold asked; and now