He crossed University Square and walked out Meridian Street to Fitch’s house.  The lawyer came downstairs in his shirt sleeves with a legal envelope in his hand.

“Glad to see you, Harwood.  I’m packing up; going to light out in the morning and get in on the end of my family’s vacation.  They’ve moved out of Maine into the Berkshires and the boys are going back to college without coming home.  I see the ‘Advertiser’ has been after you.  How do you like your job?”

“I’m not scared,” Dan replied.  “It’s all very amusing and my moral character hasn’t suffered so far.”

Fitch eyed him critically.

“Well, I haven’t time to talk to you, but here’s something I wish you’d do for me.  I have a quit-claim deed for Mrs. Owen to sign.  I forgot to tell one of the boys in the office to get her acknowledgment, but you’re a notary, aren’t you?  I’ve just been telephoning her about it.  You know who she is?  Come to think of it, she’s Bassett’s aunt-in-law.  You’re not a good Hoosier till you know Aunt Sally.  I advise you to make yourself solid with her.  I don’t know what she’s doing in town just now, but her ways are always inscrutable.”

Dan was soon ringing the bell at Mrs. Owen’s.  Mrs. Owen was out, the maid said, but would be back shortly.  Dan explained that he had come from Mr. Fitch, and she asked him to walk into the parlor and wait.

Sylvia Garrison and her grandfather had been at Montgomery since their visit to Waupegan and were now in Indianapolis for a day on their way to Boston.  The Delaware Street house had been closed all summer.  The floors were bare and the furniture was still jacketed in linen.  Sylvia rose as Harwood appeared at the parlor door.

“Pardon me,” said Dan, as the maid vanished.  “I have an errand with Mrs. Owen and I’ll wait, if you don’t mind?”

“Certainly.  Mrs. Owen has gone out to make a call, but she will be back soon.  She went only a little way down the street.  Please have a chair.”

She hesitated a moment, not knowing whether to remain or to leave the young man to himself.  Dan determined the matter for her by opening a conversation on the state of the weather.

“September is the most trying month of the year.  Just when we’re all tired of summer, it takes its last fling at us.”

“It has been very warm.  I came over from Montgomery this afternoon and it was very dusty and disagreeable on the train.”

“From Montgomery?” repeated Dan, surprised and perplexed.  Then, as it dawned upon him that this was the girl who had opened the door for him at Professor Kelton’s house in Montgomery when he had gone there with a letter from Fitch, “You see,” he said, “we’ve met before, in your own house.  You very kindly went off to find some one for me—­and didn’t come back; but I passed you on the campus as I was leaving.”

He had for the moment forgotten the name of the old gentleman to whom he had borne a letter from Mr. Fitch.  He would have forgotten the incident completely long ago if it had not been for the curious manner in which the lawyer had received his report and the secrecy so carefully enjoined.  It was odd that he should have chanced upon these people again.  Dan did not know many women, young or old, and he found this encounter with Sylvia wholly agreeable, Sylvia being, as we know, seventeen, and not an offense to the eye.