ctions
with man-like celerity and certainty and bargaining not at all. When he
was quite through, there was enough to furnish a generous travelling
wardrobe; a head-to-foot change of garmentings with a surplus to fill
two lordly suit-cases; so he bought the suit-cases also, and had them
taken with his other purchases, to the dressing-room.

Here, in quiet and great comfort, he made his second change of clothing,
first carefully removing from each garment all the little tags and
trademarks which declared it St. Louis-bought. These tags, together with
the Gavitt and the Sonneschein costumes, were crowded into the
Sonneschein hand-bag, with the soiled red handkerchief to keep them
company; and he was carrying this hand-bag when he reappeared to the
waiting salesman.

"I see you have steam heat," he remarked. "Is your boiler-room
accessible?"

"Yes, sir; it's in the basement," was the reply, and the courteous clerk
wondered if his liberal customer were thinking of adding the heating
plant to his purchases.

Griswold saw the wonder and smiled. "No; I don't want to buy it," he
explained, with the exact touch of familiarity which bridges all chasms.
"But I'm just up from the coast, where they have a good bit of fever the
year round, and it's as well to be on the safe side. May I trouble you
to show me the way?"

"Certainly," said the salesman, wondering no more; and when he had led
the way to the boiler-room, and had seen his customer thrust the
hand-bag well back among the coals in the furnace, he thought it a
worthy precaution and one which, if generally practiced, would
considerably accelerate the clothing trade.

All traces of the deck-hand Gavitt, and of the Sonneschein
planter-customer having been thus obliterated, there remained only the
paying of his bill and the summoning of a cab. Oddly enough, the cab,
when it came, proved to be a four-wheeler driven by a little,
wizen-faced man whose thin, high-pitched voice was singularly familiar.

"The Hotel Chouteau?--yis, sorr. Will you plaze hand me thim grips? I
can't lave me harrses."

The driver's excuse instantly tied the knot of recognition, and the man
who had just cremated his former identities swore softly.

"Beg your pardon, sorr; was ye spakin' to me?"

"No; I was merely remarking that the world isn't as big as it might be."

"Faith, then, it's full big enough for a man wid a wife and sivin
childer hangin' to um. Get in, sorr, and I'll have you at the