t cake, and a basket of marmalades and jellies and
gold-sealed bottles and meat pastes in china jars, and imported things
in glass, and biscuits in tins.

Ostrander, after some consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and,
munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one
of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl.

"MY DEAR WHITING:

"It was I who borrowed your car--and who ran away with your junk. I
am putting my address at the head of this, so that if you want it
back you can come and get it. But perhaps you won't want it back.

"I have a feeling that to you and your wife I am as good as dead.
If you have any thought of me it is, I am sure, to pity me. Yet I
rather fancy that you needn't. I am down and out, and living on ten
dollars a month. That's all I got when the crash came--it is all I
shall ever get. I pay four dollars a month for my room and twenty
cents a day for food. Sometimes I pay less than twenty cents when I
find myself in need of other--luxuries. Yet there's an adventure in
it, Whiting. A good little woman who lives in this house begs me to
work. But I have never worked. And why begin? I've a heritage of
bad habits, and one does not wish to seem superior to one's
ancestors.

"The winters are the worst. I spend the summers on the open road.
Ask Marion if she remembers the days when we read Stevenson
together in the garden? Tell her it is like that--under the
stars--Tell her that I am getting more out of it than she is--with
you--

"But the winters send me back to town--and this winter Fate has
brought me to an old house in a shabby street just a bit back from
the Club. On the first floor there is a little family. Three
kiddies and a young mother who works to keep the wolf from the
door. There's a Pussy-Kiddie, and a Milly-Kiddie, and a baby, and
they have adopted me as a friend.

"And this Christmas I had nothing to give them--but a red candle to
light their room.

"When I got into your car it was just for the adventure. To breathe
for a moment the air I once breathed--to fancy that Marion's ghost
might sit beside me for one little moment, as she will sit beside
you to the end of your days.

"I have played all roles but that of robber--but when I saw the
things that you had bo