When he limped into the office of his hotel at six o'clock, Andy was
ready to swear that every foot of land in California was for sale, and
that every man in San Jose was trying his best to sell it and looked
upon him, Andy Green, as a weak-minded millionaire who might be
induced to purchase. He had not visited all the places where they kept
bulletin-boards covered with yellowed placards abounding in large type
and many fat exclamation points and the word ONLY with a dollar mark
immediately after. All? He had not visited half of them, or a third!

That night he dreamed feverishly of "five-room, modern cottages with
bath," and of "ONLY $500.00 down and balance payable monthly," and of
ten-acre "ranches" and five-acre "ranches"--he who had been used to
numbering acres by the thousand and to whom the word "ranch" meant
miles of wire fencing and beyond that miles of open!

It took all the longing he felt for Mary Johnson to drive him out the
next morning and to turn his face toward those placarded places which
infested every street, but he went. He went with eyes that glared
hostility at every man who said "buy," and with chin set to stubborn
purpose. He meant to find Mary Edith Johnson, and he meant to find her
without all California knowing that he was looking for her. Not once
had he mentioned her name, or showed that he cared whether there was a
typewriter in the office or whether it was a girl, man or Chinaman who
clicked the keys; and yet he knew exactly how every girl typist had
her hair dressed, and what was the color of her eyes.

At two o'clock, Andy stopped suddenly and stared down at a crack in
the pavement, and his lips moved in muttered speech. "She's worked
three years in one of them places--and she 'thoroughly detests
falsehood in _any_ form'! Hell!" Is exactly what he was saying out
loud, on one of the busiest streets in San Jose.

A policeman glanced at him, looked again and came slowly toward him.
Andy took the hint and moved on decorously to the next bulletin-board,
but the revelation that had come to him there in the street dulled
somewhat his alertness, so that he came near committing himself to the
purchase of one of those ubiquitous "five-room, modern cottages with
bath" before he realized what he was doing and fled to the street
again, on the pretense that he had to catch the car which was just
slowing down for that crossing.

He boarded the car, though he had no idea of where it was going, and