a man not of the people, posing as an anarchist
and up in arms against the well-to-do world. None the less, he was to be
pitied.

"Poor beggar! he is in the doldrums just now, and it isn't quite fair to
hold him responsible for what he says or thinks--or for what he thinks
he thinks," said the reporter, letting the thought slip into speech.
"Just the same, I wish I had made him take that ten-dollar bill. It
might have-- Why, hello, Broffin! How are you, old man? Where the
dickens did you drop from?"

It was the inevitable steamer acquaintance who is always at hand to
prove the trite narrowness of the world, and Bainbridge kicked a chair
into comradely place for him.

Broffin, heavy-browed and clean-shaven save for a thick mustache that
hid the hard-bitted mouth, replaced the chair to suit himself and sat
down. In appearance he was a cross between a steamboat captain on a
vacation, and an up-river plantation overseer recovering from his annual
pleasure trip to the city. But his reply to Bainbridge's query proved
that he was neither.

"I didn't drop; I walked. More than that, I kept step with you all the
way from Chaudiere's to the levee. You'd be dead easy game for an
amateur."

"You'll get yourself disliked, the first thing you know," said
Bainbridge, laughing. "Can't you ever forget that you are in the
man-hunting business?"

"Yes; just as often, and for just as long, as you can forget that you
are in the news-hunting business."

"Tally!" said Bainbridge, and he laughed again. After which they sat in
silence until the _Adelantado_ doubled the bend in the great river and
the last outposts of the city's lights disappeared, leaving only a
softened glow in the upper air to temper the velvety blackness of the
April night. The steamer had passed Chalmette when Broffin said:

"Speaking of Chaudiere's reminds me: who was that fellow you were
telling good-by as you came out of the cafe? His face was as familiar as
a ship's figure-head, but I couldn't place him."

The question coupled in automatically with the reporter's train of
thought; hence he answered it rather more fully and freely than he might
have at another time and under other conditions. From establishing
Griswold's identity for his fellow passenger, he slipped by easy stages
into the story of the proletary's ups and downs, climaxing it with a
vivid little word-painting of the farewell supper at Chaudiere's.

"To hear him talk, you would size him up for