e," she said, "but
he said to tell you that he was an old friend and was very anxious to
see you--that he hasn't seen you for about eleven years."

"Eleven years--an old friend!" John said to himself, aghast. "Who could
it be, unless--" The girl was waiting, and he said, "Tell him to come
in, please."

The girl went out and ushered in a gray-haired, gray-bearded old man who
walked with a cane and was so bent downward that, under a broad-brimmed
straw hat, John did not at once see his features. The stenographer
retired to her workroom in the rear, and the visitor came to John.

It was Cavanaugh, who now removed his hat and exposed his face to view,
a face gashed with deep lines, and fairly shrinking under a sort of awed
timidity.

"I'm afraid I'm not welcome, John," he faltered, his wrinkled brow
mantled with red, his old, fat hand checked in its impulsive movement
forward and falling at his side. "I ought not to have come like this,
but I couldn't help it. I was in the city, and wanted to see you for a
lot of reasons."

"That's all right, Sam," John answered, extending his hand and trying to
divest himself of the visible effects of the shock he had received. "How
did you find me? Sit down."

Cavanaugh took the proffered chair. John pitied him, for his hands
crossed on the top of his cane quivered with intense excitement, and his
eyes swept the room with the slow awe of a beggar in the house of a
prince.

"Mostly by accident," he answered, "and putting two and two together,
and reasoning it out like a one-horse detective on his first job. John,
I know I've done wrong, but--"

"Forget all that, Sam," John said, more at ease. "Don't think I've
forgotten you. You are the one friend in the world that I really cared
for down there, and it was my intention to get at you sooner or later. I
thought, however, that I was considered dead to you and everybody at
Ridgeville."

"You are--you _still_ are," Cavanaugh said. "It is like this, John, and
in a way your secret is still safe, for I won't give it away. You
remember Todd Williams. He is in the firm of Williams & Chelton. They
set up in dry-goods after you left. Well, last fall he was on here
buying goods, and when he came back home one day after meeting--we
belong to the same church--he called me off to one side like, and said,
said he:

"'Sam, an odd thing happened to me on the Elevated train while I was in
New York,' and with that he went on to say that while he