's
desk. That person eyed her dubiously as she laid the flour sack
containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate
only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face,
dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed
altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality
which a more discerning and experienced person would have recognized at
once.

"Baggage?" curtly, as she returned him the pen.

She indicated the grimy flour sack.

A supercilious eyebrow went up.

"You'll have to pay in advance. Six bits."

Kate reddened.

"Is that customary, or because you don't like my looks?"

Taking umbrage at the asperity of her tone, he replied impudently:

"Well--I don't know you from a crow, do I?"

Kate's eyes flashed.

"You will before I leave Omaha."

He laughed incredulously as he took a key from the rack.

Kate followed him up the dirty stairway through a dingy hall to a still
dingier room in the back of the house. Long and narrow, it looked like a
kalsomined cave illumined by a lightning bug in a bottle when he turned
the electric switch. She was too tired, however, to be critical and in
her utter weariness lost consciousness as soon as her head touched the
pillow and slept dreamlessly until the dawn came feebly through the
coarse lace curtain that, stiff and gray with dust, hung at the one
window of the room.

She rubbed her eyes and looked in bewilderment at the unfamiliar
surroundings. Then she remembered, and the trip with all its attendant
circumstances came back. She speculated as to the probable amount the
sheep had shrunken on the way, how they would compare with other
consignments in the yards, whether the market conditions were favorable
or otherwise, what the commission agents whom she had known through
correspondence for many years would be like.

Her experience with the night clerk came to mind and her frown at the
recollection of his insolence changed to a puzzled look as she thought
of her retort. Whatever had prompted her to make the empty boast that he
would know her before she left Omaha? It was as unlike her as anything
she could imagine, but it had seemed to say itself.

She had a subconscious feeling that there was still something else of
which she wished to think before getting up, and as she searched her
mind it flashed upon her--the stranger who had bumped into her in the
dark. Of course, that was it! She