y unfolded the dollar bill and held
out the hand-painted blouse pin, watching her closely.

"What a pretty pin!" she said in a flat, disinterested voice. She
looked at it perfunctorily. "I know a man who used to carry a potato
to chase rheumatism away. It was planted by a one-eyed, left-handed
negro, born on the thirteenth of the month. I've heard of an elk's
tooth for pleurisy and a rabbit's foot for evil spirits; but a pin like
that? It will lead you into danger instead of away from it."

"Not when it is pinned to a canoe cushion by a beautiful girl at the
hour of three o'clock in the morning in a dense fog," declared Kendrick
significantly.

"That is very silly," said the haughty Miss Williams with a bored air
as she handed it back to him and turned towards her typewriter.
"Good-day, Mr. Kendrick. I really must get on with my work."

It was with an unreasonable feeling of disappointment that he bowed
himself out. She had not blinked an eyelash! Who was the idiot who
first started looking for needles in haystacks anyway? A fool's quest!
Mumma! but wasn't he _de trop_ with the ladies? Well, he would buy
cigars with the dollar and make a present of the pin to Mrs. Parlby,
his uncle's estimable housekeeper.

But he did neither of these things. Instead, he was to continue the
folly of keeping both souvenirs and the equal folly of looking at them
from time to time--to see if they were safe.

CHAPTER V

THE TAN SATCHEL

Ordinarily Hugh Podmore, secretary to the President of the Canadian
Lake Shores Railway, took a keen interest in his work. If anything, he
applied himself more industriously during the many absences of his
chief than when President Wade was there to observe and commend, a zeal
which might or might not have been a tribute to his conscientiousness.
But to-day Mr. Podmore, although dressed with that care which
habitually imparted to his well proportioned figure something of the
beau brummel,--to-day he was not quite his customary polite self.
Things irritated him which ordinarily he would not have noticed, and
the morning had dragged for him in quite an unusual way. He had spent
much time gazing absently out of the office window at the traffic in
the street below, with many futile glances at his watch.

The first shop whistle that led the noonday medley found him pulling
down the lid of his roll-top desk and he was reaching for his raincoat
when his stenographer entered to inform h