recreation.
He lives at high tension, scintillates, burns his red fire without
discrimination and is shortly extinguished. You are not like that. You
can't even sympathize with that sort of person. But I can, for I'm cut
from a remnant of the same cloth."

"Scintillate all you want to, Hetty," cried Patsy with a laugh; "but
you're not going to be extinguished. For we, the imitation journalists,
have taken you under our wings. There's no underworld at Millville, and
the only excitement we can furnish just now is a night with us at the
old farm."

"That," replied Hetty, "is indeed a real excitement. You can't quite
understand it, perhaps; but it's so--so very different from what I'm
accustomed to."

Uncle John welcomed the girl artist cordially and under his hospitable
roof the waif soon felt at ease. At dinner the conversation turned upon
Thursday Smith and his peculiar experience. Beth asked Hetty if she knew
the man.

"Yes," replied the girl; "I've seen him at the office and we've
exchanged a word or two. But he boards with Thorne, the liveryman, and
not at the hotel."

"You have never seen him before you met him here?"

"Never."

"I wonder," said Louise musingly, "if he is quite right in his mind. All
this story may be an hallucination, you know."

"He's a very clever fellow," asserted Hetty, "and such a loss of memory
is by no means so uncommon as you think. Our brains are queer
things--mine is, I know--and it doesn't take much to throw their
machinery out of gear. Once I knew a reporter who was worried and
over-worked. He came to the office one morning and said he was George
Washington, the Commander of the Continental Army. In all other ways he
was sane enough, and we humored him and called him 'General.' At the end
of three months the idea quit him as suddenly as it had come on, and he
was not only normal but greatly restored in strength of intellect
through the experience. Perhaps some of the overworked brain cells had
taken a rest and renewed their energy. It would not surprise me if some
day Thursday Smith suddenly remembered who he was."

[Footnote: This anecdote is true.--_Author._]

"In the meantime," said Uncle John, "I'm going to make an effort to
discover his identity."

"In what way, Uncle?" asked Patsy.

"I'll set Fogerty, who is a clever detective, at work. No man can
disappear from his customary haunts without leaving some sort of a
record behind him, and Fogerty may be able to uncove