from.

By rights,--by all the rights of fiction,--he, wearing this jewelled
emblem in plain sight, should have been hailed by a bearded foreigner
and welcomed to the inner councils of some secret _Bund_, cabal, council
or propaganda, as one coming from afar, bearing important messages. It
should have turned out so, certainly. In this case, however, the sequel
was very different and in a great measure disappointing.

A trifle foot-weary and decidedly overheated, young Mr. Green came out
of the East Side by way of Nassau Street, and at Fulton turned north
into Broadway. Just across from the old Astor House, a man wearing a
stringy beard and a dusty black suit stood at the curbing, apparently
waiting for a car. He carried an umbrella under one arm and at his feet
rested a brown wicker suit-case with the initials "G. W. T." and the
address, "Enid, Oklahoma," stencilled on its side in black letters.
Plainly he was a stranger in the city. Between glances down the street
to see whether his car was nearing him, he counted the upper stories of
the near-by skyscrapers and gazed at the faces of those who streamed
past him.

His roving eye fell upon a splendid badge of gold enamel gleaming
against a background of blue serge, and his face lighted with the joy of
one meeting a most dear friend in a distant land. Shifting his umbrella
from the right hand to the left, he gave three successive and careful
tugs at his right coat lapel, all the while facing Judson Green.
Following this he made a military salute and then, stepping two paces
forward, he undertook to engage Green's hand in a peculiar and difficult
cross-fingered clasp. And he uttered cabalistic words of greeting in
some strange tongue, all the while beaming gladly.

In less than no time, though, his warmth all changed to indignation; and
as Green backed away, retreating in poor order and some embarrassment,
he gathered from certain remarks thrown after him, that the outraged
brother from Enid was threatening him with arrest and prosecution as a
rank impostor--for wearing, without authority, the sacred insignia of an
Imperial Past Potentate of the Supreme Order of Knightly Somethings or
Other--he didn't catch the last words, being then in full flight. So the
adventure-seeker counted that day lost too and buried the Oriental
emblem at the bottom of a bureau drawer to keep it out of mischief.

He read the papers closely, seeking there the seeds of adventure. In one
of the