Swan’s Hotel was one of those nondescript buildings of wood which are not worth more than a three-line paragraph even when they burn down.  It was smelly.  The kitchen joined the dining-room, and the dining-room the office, which was half a bar-room, with a few boxes of sawdust mathematically arranged along the walls.  There were many like it up and down the coast.  There were pictures on the walls of terrible wrecks at sea, naval battles, and a race horse or two.

The landlord himself lifted Fitzgerald’s bag to the counter.

“A room for the night and supper, right away.”

“Here, Jimmy,” called the landlord to a growing, lumbering boy, “take this satchel up to number five.”

The boy went his way, eying the labels respectfully and with some awe.  This was the third of its kind he had ported up-stairs in the past twenty-four hours.

Fitzgerald cast an idle glance at the loungers.  There were half a dozen of them, some of them playing cards and some displaying talent on a pool table, badly worn and beer-stained.  There was nothing distinctive about any of them, excepting the little man who was reading an evening paper, and the only distinctive thing about him was a pair of bright eyes.  Behind their gold-rimmed spectacles they did not waver under Fitzgerald’s scrutiny; so the latter dismissed the room and its company from his mind and proceeded into dinner.  As he was late, he dined alone on mildly warm chicken, greasy potatoes, and muddy coffee.  He was used often to worse fare than this, and no complaint was even though of.  After he had changed his linen he took the road to the house at the top of the hill.  Now, then, what sort of an affair was this going to be, such as would bend a girl of her bearing to speak to him on the street?  Moreover, at a moment when he was playing a grown-up child’s game?  She had known that he was prevaricating when he had stated that he represented a charitable organization; and he knew that she knew he knew it.  What, then?  It could not be a joke; women never rise to such extravagant heights.  Pirates and treasures; he wouldn’t have been surprised at all had Old Long John Silver hobbled out from behind any one of those vine-grown fences, and demanded his purse.

The street was dim, and more than once he stumbled over a loose board in the wooden walk.  If the admiral had been the right kind of philanthropist he would have furnished stone.  But then, it was one thing to give a country town something and another to force the town council into accepting it.  The lamp-posts, also of wood, stood irregularly apart, often less than a hundred feet, and sometimes more, lighting nothing but their immediate vicinity.  Fitzgerald could see the lamps, plainly, but could separate none of the objects round or beneath.  That is why he did not see the face of the man who passed him in a hurry.  He never forgot a face, if it were a man’s; his only difficulty was