, I really do!
Can't--can't a fellow change his mind? Oh, I know you think I'm a
lunatic, and there's plenty of reason, too!"

Keen studied him calmly. "Yes, plenty of reason, plenty of reason, Mr.
Gatewood. But do you suppose you are the only one? I know another who
was perfectly sane two weeks ago."

The young man waited impatiently; the Tracer paced the room, gray head
bent, delicate, wrinkled hands clasped loosely behind his bent back.

"You have horses at the Whip and Spur Club," he said abruptly. "Suppose
you ride out and see how close Miss Southerland has come to solving our
problem."

Gatewood seized the offered hand and wrung it with a fervor out of all
reason; and it is curious that the Tracer of Lost Persons did not appear
to be astonished.

"You're rather impetuous--like your father," he said slowly. "I knew
him; so I've ventured to trust his son--even when I heard how aimlessly
he was living his life. Mr. Gatewood! May I ask you something--as an old
friend of your father?"

The young man nodded, subdued, perplexed, scarcely understanding.

"It's only this: If you _do_ find the woman you could love--in the
Park--to-day--come back to me some day and let me tell you all those
foolish, trite, tiresome things that I should have told a son of mine. I
am so old that you will not take offense--you will not mind listening to
me, or forgetting the dull, prosy things I say about the curse of
idleness, and the habits of cynical thinking, and the perils of
vacant-minded indulgence. You will forgive me--and you will forget me.
That will be as it should be. Good-by."

Gatewood, sobered, surprised, descended the stairs and hailed a hansom.

CHAPTER VI

All the way to the Whip and Spur Club he sat buried in a reverie from
which, at intervals, he started, aroused by the heavy, expectant beating
of his own pulses. But what did he expect, in Heaven's name? Not the
discovery of a woman who had never existed. Yet his excitement and
impatience grew as he watched the saddling of his horse; and when at
length he rode out into the sunshine and cantered through the Park
entrance, his sense of impending events and his expectancy amounted to a
fever which colored his face attractively.

He saw her almost immediately. Her horse was walking slowly in the
dappled shadows of the new foliage; she, listless in her saddle,
sometimes watching the throngs of riders passing, at moments turning to
gaze into the woodland vist