After supper Luke gave his mother a lesson in operating the machine.
Both found that it required a little practice.

The next morning as Luke was standing at his usual corner, he had a
surprise.

A gentleman came out of the Sherman House and walked slowly up Clark
Street. As he passed Luke, he stopped and asked, "Boy, have you the
_Inter-Ocean?_"

Luke looked up in his customer's face. He paused in the greatest
excitement.

The man was on the shady side of fifty, nearly six feet in height,
with a dark complexion, hair tinged with gray, and a wart on the upper
part of his right cheek!

CHAPTER VIII

A MARKED MAN

At last, so Luke verily believed, he stood face to face with the man
who had deceived his dying father, and defrauded his mother and
himself of a sum which would wholly change their positions and
prospects. But he wanted to know positively, and he could not think of
a way to acquire this knowledge.

Meanwhile the gentleman noticed the boy's scrutiny, and it did not
please him.

"Well, boy!" he said gruffly, "you seem determined to know me again.
You stare hard enough. Let me tell you this is not good manners."

"Excuse me," said Luke, "but your face looked familiar to me. I
thought I had seen you before."

"Very likely you have. I come to Chicago frequently, and generally
stop at the Sherman House."

"Probably that explains it," said Luke. "Are you not Mr. Thomas, of
St. Louis?"

The gentleman laughed.

"You will have to try again," he said. "I am Mr. Browning, of
Milwaukee. Thomas is my first name."

"Browning!" thought Luke, disappointed. "Evidently I am on the wrong
track. And yet he answers father's description exactly."

"I don't know anyone in Milwaukee," he said aloud.

"Then it appears we can't claim acquaintance."

The gentleman took his paper and turned down Randolph Street toward
State.

"Strange!" he soliloquized, "that boy's interest in my personal
appearance. I wonder if there can be a St. Louis man who resembles me.
If so, he can't be a very good-looking man. This miserable wart ought
to be enough to distinguish me from anyone else."

He paused a minute, and then a new thought came into his mind.

"There is something familiar in that boy's face. I wonder who he can
be. I will buy my evening papers of him, and take that opportunity to
inquire."

Meanwhile Luke, to satisfy a doubt in his mind, entered the hotel,
and, going up to the office, looked over the list