Up to that time he had given no thought whatever to his estate, beyond the fact that he had been undoubtedly adjudged legally dead and his property divided.  But that day as he turned away from the lake front, he began to wonder about it.  After all, since he meant to surrender himself before long, why not telegraph collect to the old offices of the estate in New York and have them wire him money?  But even granting that they were still in existence, he knew with what lengthy caution, following stunned surprise, they would go about investigating the message.  And there were leaks in the telegraph.  He would have a pack of newspaper hounds at his heels within a few hours.  The police, too.  No, it wouldn’t do.

The next day he got a job as a taxicab driver, and that night and every night thereafter he went back to West Madison Street and picked up one or more of the derelicts there and bought them food.  He developed quite a system about it.  He waited until he saw a man stop outside an eating-house look in and then pass on.  But one night he got rather a shock.  For the young fellow he accosted looked at him first with suspicion, which was not unusual, and later with amazement.

“Captain Livingstone!” he said, and checked his hand as it was about to rise to the salute.  His face broke into a smile, and he whipped off his cap.  “You’ve forgotten me, sir,” he said.  “But I’ve got your visiting card on the top of my head all right.  Can you see it?”

He bent his head and waited, but on no immediate reply being forthcoming, for Dick was hastily determining on a course of action, he looked up.  It was then that he saw Dick’s cheap and shabby clothes, and his grin faded.

“I say,” he said.  “You are Livingstone, aren’t you?  I’d have known—­”

“I think you’ve made a mistake, old man,” Dick said, feeling for his words carefully.  “That’s not my name, anyhow.  I thought, when I saw you staring in at that window—­How about it?”

The boy looked at him again, and then glanced away.

“I was looking, all right,” he said.  “I’ve been having a run of hard luck.”

It had been Dick’s custom to eat with his finds, and thus remove from the meal the quality of detached charity.  Men who would not take money would join him in a meal.  But he could not face the lights with this keen-eyed youngster.  He offered him money instead.

“Just a lift,” he said, awkwardly, when the boy hesitated.  “I’ve been there myself, lately.”

But when at last he had prevailed and turned away he Was conscious that the doughboy was staring after him, puzzled and unconvinced.

He had a bad night after that.  The encounter had brought back his hard-working, care-free days in the army.  It had brought back, too, the things he had put behind him, his profession and his joy in it, the struggles and the aspirations that constitute a man’s life.  With them there came, too, a more real Elizabeth, and a wave of tenderness for her, and of regret.  He turned on his sagging bed, and deliberately put her away from him.  Even if this other ghost were laid, he had no right to her.