Santa Cruz, when he did reach it, seemed, on a superficial examination, to be almost as large as San Jose, and the real-estate offices closer together and even more plentifully supplied with modern cottages and bath—­and the heart of him sank prophetically.  For the first time since he dropped off the street-car in San Jose, it seemed to him that Mary Johnson was quite as far off, quite as unattainable as she had ever been.

He walked slowly up Pacific Avenue and watched the hurrying crowds, and wondered if chance would be kind to him; if he should meet her on the street, perhaps.  He did not want to canvass all the real-estate offices in town.  “It would take me till snow flies,” he murmured dispiritedly, forgetting that here was a place where snow never flew, and sought a hotel where they were not “full to the eaves” as two complacent clerks had already told him.

At supper, he made friends with a genial-voiced insurance agent—­the kind who does not insist upon insuring your life whether you want it insured or not.  The agent told Andy to call him Jack and use him good and plenty—­perhaps because something wistful and lonely in the gray eyes of Andy appealed to him—­and Andy took him at his word and was grateful.  He discovered what day of the week it was:  Saturday, and that on the next day Santa Cruz would be “wide-open” because of an excursion from Sacramento.  Jack offered to help him lose himself in the crowd, and again Andy was grateful.  For the first time since leaving the Flying U he went to bed feeling not utterly alone and friendless, and awoke pleasantly expectant.  Friend Jack was to pilot him down to the Casino at eleven, and he had incidentally made one prediction which stuck closely to Andy, even in his sleep.  Jack had assured him that the whole town would be at the beach; and if the whole town were at the beach, why then, Mary would surely be somewhere in the crowd.  And if she were in the crowd—­“If she’s there, I’ll sure get a line on her before night,” Andy told himself, with much assurance.  “A fellow that’s been in the habit of cutting any certain brand of critter out of a big herd ought to be able to spot his girl in a crowd”—­and he hummed softly while he dressed.

The excursion train was already in town, and the esplanade was, looking down from Beach Hill, a slow-moving river of hats, with splotches of bright colors and with an outer fringe of men and women.  “That’s a good-sized trail-herd uh humans,” Andy remarked, and the insurance agent laughed appreciatively.

“You wait till you see them milling around on the board walk,” he advised impressively.  “If you happen to be looking for anybody, you’ll realize that there’s some people scattered around in your vicinity.  I had a date with a girl, down here one Sunday during the season, and we hunted each other from ten in the morning till ten at night and never got sight of each other.”

Andy gave him a sidelong, suspicious glance, but friend Jack was evidently as innocent as he looked, and so Andy limped silently down the hill to the Casino and wondered if fate were going to cheat him at the last moment.