“I’ll go out there!” he decided. “I’ll see this Amy Ross Solway, and explain. And, if her trouble’s anything real, I’ll—” He hesitated. “Well, I’ll give her the best advice I can,” he thought.

No, James Ross was not what you might call impulsively sympathetic. But, considering how vehemently he hated to be mixed up in other people’s affairs, it was creditable of him even to think of giving advice, creditable of him to go at all.

He arose, put on his overcoat, caught up his hat, and went downstairs. Nobody took any notice of him. He walked out of the Hotel Miston—and he never came back.

III

It did not please the young man to ask questions in this, his native city. He had spent time enough in studying a map of New York, and he knew his way about pretty well. But there were, naturally, things he did not know; for instance, he went to the Pennsylvania Station, and learned that his train for Stamford left from the Grand Central.

It was after one o’clock, then, so he went into a restaurant and had lunch before going farther—his first meal in the United States. He had never enjoyed anything more. To walk through these streets, among the hurrying and indifferent crowds, to be one of them, to feel himself at home here, filled him with something like elation. It was his city.

A little after three, he boarded the train. And, in spite of his caution and his native reticence, he would, at that moment, have relished a talk with one of his fellow countrymen in the smoking car. He was not disposed to start a conversation without encouragement, though, and nobody took any notice of him; nobody had, since his landing. A clever criminal, escaping from justice, could not have been much more successful in leaving no traces.

When he got out at Stamford, the rain had ceased, but the sky was menacing and overcast. He stood for a moment on the platform, again reluctant to ask questions, but there was no help for it this time.

He stopped a grocer’s boy, and asked him where Wygatt Road was. The boy told him. “But it’s a long way,” he added.

Ross didn’t care how long it was. This was the first suburban town he had seen, and it charmed him. Such a prosperous, orderly, lively town! He thought that he might like to live here.

Dusk was closing in early this dismal day; it was almost dark before he reached the hill he had to climb. The street 

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