It hadn’t occurred to me she would actually stop and talk. It had been rather too much to hope for. And I knew I felt a curious little stir of delight all over me at the first sound of her friendly, gentle voice.

“I suppose you are Mr. Killdare?” she said quietly.

Every one knows how a man quickens at the sound of his own name. “Yes, ma’am,” I told her—in our own way of speaking. But I didn’t know what else to say.

“I was riding over to see you—on business,” she went on. “For my uncle—Grover Nealman, of Kastle Krags. I’m his secretary.”

The words made me stop and think. It was hard for me to explain, even to myself, just why [Pg 13]they thrilled me far under the skin, and why the little tingle of delight I had known at first gave way to a mighty surge of anticipation and pleasure. It seems to be true that the first thing we look for in a stranger is his similarity to us, and the second, his dissimilarity; and in these two factors alone rests our attitude towards him. It has been thus since the beginning of the world—if he is too dissimilar, our reaction is one of dislike, and I suppose, far enough down the scale of civilization, we would immediately try to kill him. If he has enough in common with ourselves we at once feel warm and friendly, and invite him to our tribal feasts.

[Pg 13]

Perhaps this was the way it was between myself and Edith Nealman. She wasn’t infinitely set apart from me—some one rich and experienced and free of all the problems that made up my life. Nealman’s niece meant something far different than Nealman’s daughter—if indeed the man had a daughter. She was his secretary, she said—a paid worker even as I was. She had come to see me on business—and no wonder I was anticipatory and elated as I hadn’t been for years!

“I’m glad to know you, Miss——” I began. For of course I didn’t know her name, then.

“Miss Nealman,” she told me, easily. “Now [Pg 14]I’ll tell you what my uncle wants. He heard about you, from Mr. Todd.”

[Pg 14]

I nodded. Mr. Todd had brought me out from the village and had helped me with some work I was doing for my university, in a northern state.

“He was trying to get Mr. Todd to help him, but he was busy and couldn’t do it,” the girl went on. “But he said to get Ned Killdare—that you could do it as well as he could. He said no one 

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