That night he dreamed feverishly of “five-room, modern cottages with bath,” and of “ONLY $500.00 down and balance payable monthly,” and of ten-acre “ranches” and five-acre “ranches”—­he who had been used to numbering acres by the thousand and to whom the word “ranch” meant miles of wire fencing and beyond that miles of open!

It took all the longing he felt for Mary Johnson to drive him out the next morning and to turn his face toward those placarded places which infested every street, but he went.  He went with eyes that glared hostility at every man who said “buy,” and with chin set to stubborn purpose.  He meant to find Mary Edith Johnson, and he meant to find her without all California knowing that he was looking for her.  Not once had he mentioned her name, or showed that he cared whether there was a typewriter in the office or whether it was a girl, man or Chinaman who clicked the keys; and yet he knew exactly how every girl typist had her hair dressed, and what was the color of her eyes.

At two o’clock, Andy stopped suddenly and stared down at a crack in the pavement, and his lips moved in muttered speech.  “She’s worked three years in one of them places—­and she ’thoroughly detests falsehood in any form’!  Hell!” Is exactly what he was saying out loud, on one of the busiest streets in San Jose.

A policeman glanced at him, looked again and came slowly toward him.  Andy took the hint and moved on decorously to the next bulletin-board, but the revelation that had come to him there in the street dulled somewhat his alertness, so that he came near committing himself to the purchase of one of those ubiquitous “five-room, modern cottages with bath” before he realized what he was doing and fled to the street again, on the pretense that he had to catch the car which was just slowing down for that crossing.

He boarded the car, though he had no idea of where it was going, and fished in his pocket for a nickel.  And just when he was reaching up from the step where he stood clinging—­reaching over the flower-piled hat of a girl, to place the nickel in the outstretched palm of the conductor, he heard for the first time in many weeks the name of Mary Johnson.  A girl at his elbow was asking the other:  “What’n the world’s become of Mary Johnson?  She wasn’t to the dance last night, and it’s the first one—­”

Andy held his breath.

“Oh, Mame quit her place with Kelly and Gray, two weeks ago.  She’s gone to Santa Cruz and got a place for the summer.  Her and Lola Parsons went together, and—­”

Andy took advantage of another crossing, and dropped off.  He wanted to find out when the next train left for Santa Cruz.  It never occurred to him that there might be two Mary Johnsons in the world, which was fortunate, perhaps; he wasted no time in hesitation, and so, within twenty minutes, he was hearing the wheels of a fast train go clickety-click, clickety-click over the switches in the suburbs of San Jose, and he was asking the conductor what time the train would reach Santa Cruz, and was getting snubbed for his anxiety.