Keen regarded her absently, then crossed one leg over the other.

"Read me your notes," he said with a smile.

She read them, folded them, and he took them from her, thoughtfully regarding her.

"Did you know that your mother and I were children together?" he asked.

"No!" She stared. "Is that why you sent for me that day at the school of stenography?"

"That is why . . . When I learned that my playmate--your mother--was dead, is it not reasonable to suppose that I should wish her daughter to have a chance?"

Miss Southerland looked at him steadily.

"She was like you--when she married . . . I never married . . . Do you wonder that I sent for you, child?"

Nothing but the clock ticking there in the sunny room, and an old man staring into two dimmed brown eyes, and the little breezes at the open window whispering of summers past.

"This young man, Gatewood," said the Tracer, clearing his voice of its hoarseness--"this young man ought to be all right, if I did not misjudge his father--years ago, child, years ago. And he is all right--" He half turned toward a big letter-file; "his record is clean, so far. The trouble with him is idleness. He ought to marry."

"Isn't he trying to?" she asked.

"It looks like it. Miss Southerland, we must find this woman!"

"Yes, but I don't see how you are going to--on such slight information--"

"Information! Child, I have all I want--all I could desire." He laughed, passing his hands over his gray hair. "We are going to find the girl he is in love with before the week ends!"

"Do you really think so?" she exclaimed.

"Yes. But you must do a great deal in this case."

"I?"

"Exactly."

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