it, with his usual enthusiasm and circumspection.

Sauntering out into the street, he strolled first toward the
post-office. The train on which he had just come had been a mail-train,
and he calculated that he would find half the town there.

His calculation was a correct one. The store was crowded with people.
Taking his place in the line drawn up before the post-office window, he
awaited his turn, and when it came shouted out the name which was his
one talisman--James Wellgood.

The man behind the boxes was used to the name and reached out a hand
toward a box unusually well stacked, but stopped half-way there and gave
Sweetwater a sharp look.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"A stranger," that young man put in volubly, "looking for James
Wellgood. I thought, perhaps, you could tell me where to find him. I see
that his letters pass through this office."

"You're taking up another man's time," complained the postmaster. He
probably alluded to the man whose elbow Sweetwater felt boring into his
back. "Ask Dick over there; he knows him."

The detective was glad enough to escape and ask Dick. But he was better
pleased yet when Dick--a fellow with a squint whose hand was always in
the sugar--told him that Mr. Wellgood would probably be in for his mail
in a few moments. "That is his buggy standing before the drug-store on
the opposite side of the way."

So! he had netted Jones' quondam waiter at the first cast! "Lucky!" was
what he said to himself, "still lucky!"

Sauntering to the door, he watched for the owner of that buggy. He had
learned, as such fellows do, that there was a secret hue and cry after
this very man by the New York police; that he was supposed by some to
be Sears himself. In this way he would soon be looking upon the very man
whose steps he had followed through the Fairbrother house a few nights
before, and through whose resolute action he had very nearly run the
risk of a lingering death from starvation.

"A dangerous customer," thought he. "I wonder if my instinct will go
so far as to make me recognize his presence. I shouldn't wonder. It has
served me almost as well as that many times before."

It appeared to serve him now, for when the man finally showed himself
on the cross-walk separating the two buildings he experienced a sudden
indecision not unlike that of dread, and there being nothing in the
man's appearance to warrant apprehension, he took it for the instinctive
recognition it undoubted