“I thought I’d just tell you,” said she.  Then she marched, holding her skirts tightly around her, with a disclosure of embroidered ruffles and the contour of pretty hips, and there was a shout of laughter in the place.  Carroll pushed away his bowl of soup and turned to a grinning waiter near him.

“My check,” he said.

“I ain’t your waiter,” replied the man, insolently.

“Bring me my check for this soup and coffee,” repeated Carroll, and the man started.  There was something in his look and tone that commanded respect even in this absurdity.  In reality, for the time, he was almost a madman.  His fixed idea reasserted itself.  At that moment, if it had been possible that his enemy, the man who had precipitated all this upon him, could have entered the room, there would have been murder done, and again for the moment his mind overlapped on the wrong side of life, and the desire for death was upon him.  There was that in his face which hushed the laughter.

“They had better not hound that man much farther,” one man at the table on the right whispered to his companion, who nodded, with sharp eyes on Carroll’s face.  They were both newspaper-men.

When Carroll had paid his bill and passed out, one of the men, young and clean-shaven, pressed close to his side.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said, “but if you would allow me to express my regrets and sympathy—­”

“No regrets nor sympathy are required, thank you, sir,” replied Carroll.

“If I could be of any assistance,” persisted the man, who was short in his weekly column and not easily daunted.

“No assistance is required, thank you, sir,” replied Carroll.

The man retreated, and rejoined his companion at the table.

“Get anything out of him?” asked the other.

“No, but I can make something out of him, I guess.”

“Poor devil!” said the other man.

“It might have paid to shadow him,” said the first man, thoughtfully.  “I shouldn’t wonder if he took a bee-line for a drug-store.  He looked desperate.”

“Or perhaps the park.  He looks like the sort that might have a pistol around somewhere.”

This man actually, after a second’s reflection, left his luncheon and hastened after Carroll, but he did not find him.  Carroll had recovered himself and had taken the Elevated up-town to answer another advertisement.  That was one for a book-keeper, and there was also unsuccessful.  Coming out, he stood on the corner, looking at his list.  He had written down nearly every want in the advertising columns.  Actually he had even thought of trying for a position as coachman.  He certainly could drive and could care for horses, and he considered quite impartially that he might make a good appearance in a livery on a fashionable turn-out.  He had left now on his list only two which he had not tried; one was for a superintendent to care for a certain public building, a small museum.  He had really