“Then you’ll come!” she cried joyously.  “That was what I came to find out.”

“Come?” he muttered absently.  “Where?”

“Why, to dinner to-morrow.  You know you said you’d recover your suit if you got that money.”

“I forgot all about it,” he said humbly.  “You see, this morning the poundman got Maria’s two cows and the baby calf, and—­well, it happened that Maria didn’t have any money, and so I had to recover her cows for her.  That’s where the Transcontinental fiver went—­’The Ring of Bells’ went into the poundman’s pocket.”

“Then you won’t come?”

He looked down at his clothing.

“I can’t.”

Tears of disappointment and reproach glistened in her blue eyes, but she said nothing.

“Next Thanksgiving you’ll have dinner with me in Delmonico’s,” he said cheerily; “or in London, or Paris, or anywhere you wish.  I know it.”

“I saw in the paper a few days ago,” she announced abruptly, “that there had been several local appointments to the Railway Mail.  You passed first, didn’t you?”

He was compelled to admit that the call had come for him, but that he had declined it.  “I was so sure—­I am so sure—­of myself,” he concluded.  “A year from now I’ll be earning more than a dozen men in the Railway Mail.  You wait and see.”

“Oh,” was all she said, when he finished.  She stood up, pulling at her gloves.  “I must go, Martin.  Arthur is waiting for me.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive sweetheart.  There was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not go around him, and her lips met his without their wonted pressure.

She was angry with him, he concluded, as he returned from the gate.  But why?  It was unfortunate that the poundman had gobbled Maria’s cows.  But it was only a stroke of fate.  Nobody could be blamed for it.  Nor did it enter his head that he could have done aught otherwise than what he had done.  Well, yes, he was to blame a little, was his next thought, for having refused the call to the Railway Mail.  And she had not liked “Wiki-Wiki.”

He turned at the head of the steps to meet the letter-carrier on his afternoon round.  The ever recurrent fever of expectancy assailed Martin as he took the bundle of long envelopes.  One was not long.  It was short and thin, and outside was printed the address of The New York Outview.  He paused in the act of tearing the envelope open.  It could not be an acceptance.  He had no manuscripts with that publication.  Perhaps—­his heart almost stood still at the—­wild thought—­perhaps they were ordering an article from him; but the next instant he dismissed the surmise as hopelessly impossible.

It was a short, formal letter, signed by the office editor, merely informing him that an anonymous letter which they had received was enclosed, and that he could rest assured the Outview’s staff never under any circumstances gave consideration to anonymous correspondence.