Hair, Black.

Complexion, Ruddy.

Face, Square.”

He looked about at the men in the car until his eye fell on Stephen.

[9]

[9]

“That’s him, all right,” he thought. “I should say it would be sort of inconvenient to have such a good description to fill!”

He went to Stephen and touched him on the shoulder. “Hey, stranger, I reckon this belongs to you.”

Loring, surprised, took the proffered paper. Then he felt in the pocket of his coat.

“I think it must have fallen out of my pocket. Much obliged!” he exclaimed.

It was an old passport, expired ten years since, but Stephen carried it about with him as a means of identification in case of accident.

“How did you know that this was mine?” he asked the brakeman from idle curiosity.

The man pointed with an exceedingly dirty thumb to the description.

“I ain’t no detective, but I reckon that fits pretty well.” Then he nodded to Loring and walked away.

Loring glanced idly at the passport as it lay open on his knee. As he did so he wondered what the friends who knew him ten years back, at the time when that document was issued, would say to his appearance now. “Wild oats gone to seed. I guess that about describes me,”[10] he murmured, with a grim smile, as he folded the passport and slipped it back into the frayed lining of his pocket. Dissipation and wreck do not change the color of a man’s eyes, the shape of his forehead or the outline of his face, so that it had still been possible to recognize Loring by his old passport. Had it been a description of his personality instead of his measurements, no one could have recognized the original. Mathematically it is but the difference of an inch from a retreating chin to one thrust forward; artistically a very 

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