f cars, the advantages of one over the other, and the
prevailing failings and universal obstacles than he had ever dreamed
before. Incidentally, he had established a friendship that lasted and
was to be of mutual benefit thereafter. He jubilated when considering
fortune. All things were coming his way. He would have accepted it as a
part of the regular procedure had he found a twenty dollar gold piece on
the pavement. His luck was in.

And so, like a happy victor, Mr. James Gollop of the Sayers Automobile
Company returned to New York one evening and, knowing that it was too
late to base any hope on either MacDougall Alley or the Martha Putnam
hotel, repaired, in lieu thereof, to the palm-garden precincts of the
place in which he had last dined with Mary Allen. He made plans for the
morrow, thought of what he might say to her, determined that the mystery
should end, and was anything but discontented. He ate leisurely, enjoyed
his food, and perused an evening paper. He liked the black coffee, and
felt civilized when he resorted to the finger bowl. He got to his feet
leisurely, well content, and then stopped, bent to one side, moved a
pace and through a screen of palm fronds stared as if transfixed. What
he saw was Mary Allen seated at a nice little table, inspecting a bunch
of violets in her hand, whilst across from her, stiff, pompous,
self-conscious, but entirely self-satisfied, sat the man who might have
been Mr. James Gollop but who was, indubitably one J. Woodworth-Granger,
Judge of the Fourth District Court. Others might not identify him, but
Mr. James Gollop did and for a moment his mind was in a turmoil of
surprise and anger. Granger! That wind bag had somehow, probably by mere
accident, met the only girl on earth, taken base advantage of his
likeness to one Jim Gollop, and was profiting thereby! How dare he! To
impersonate another man under ordinary circumstances was in itself
sufficiently culpable, but in private affairs, extraordinary and
personal, it became outrageous.

A great wave of indignation surged Jimmy Gollop as if he had been thrust
into a turbulent sea and was being helplessly bobbed up and down
thereon. He was undecided whether to create a scene by rushing forward,
seizing the impertinent Judge by the short hair at the back of his neck,
which country barbers had encouraged to a bristle, or to stalk
deliberately forward like the long lost hero in the cinema and--after
the screen had announced his wo