elusive charm would disappear; his vivid impression of her would be effaced. But even while he thought this he found himself again wondering who she was and how he could find her. He could not drive her from his mind. 

Meantime he had proceeded slowly on his way. Suddenly a benevolent, white-bearded man halted him, with a deprecating gesture. “Excuse me, sir,” he began, “but your hat——” 

Orme lifted his straw hat from his head. A glance showed him that it was disfigured by a great blotch of black grease. He had held his 8 hat in his hand while talking to the girl, and it must have touched her car at a point where the axle of the dray had rubbed. So this was his one memento of the incident. 

8

He thanked the stranger, and walked to a near-by hatter’s, where a ready clerk set before him hats of all styles. He selected one quickly and left his soiled hat to be cleaned and sent home later. 

Offering a ten-dollar bill in payment, he received in change a five-dollar bill and a silver dollar. He gave the coin a second glance. It was the first silver dollar that he had handled for some time, for he seldom visited the West. 

“There’s no charge for the cleaning,” said the clerk, noting down Orme’s name and address, and handing the soiled hat to the cash-boy. 

Orme, meantime, was on the point of folding the five-dollar bill to put it into his pocket-book. Suddenly he looked at it intently. Written in ink across the face of it, were the words: 

“Remember Person You Pay This To.”

Remember Person You Pay This To

The writing was apparently a hurried scrawl, but the letters were large and quite legible. They 9 appeared to have been written on an uneven surface, for there were several jogs and breaks in the writing, as if the pen had slipped. 

9

“This is curious,” remarked Orme. 

The clerk blinked his watery eyes and looked at the bill in Orme’s hand. “Oh, yes, sir,” he explained. “I remember that. The gentleman who paid it in this morning called our attention to it.” 

“If he’s the man who wrote this, he probably doesn’t know that there’s a law against defacing money.” 

 Prev. P 6/193 next