“I was mot wrong,” thought Grenfall; “he looks like a duelist.  Who the devil are they, anyhow?” Then aloud:  “At this rate we’d be able to beat the train to Washington in a straight-away race.  Isn’t it a delightfully wild ride?”

“I have acquired a great deal of knowledge in America, but this is the first time I have heard your definition of delight.  I agree that it is wild.”

For some moments there was silence in the noisy conveyance.  Outside, the crack of the driver’s whip, his hoarse cries, and the nerve-destroying crash of the wheels produced impressions of a mighty storm rather than of peace and pleasure.

“I am curious to know where you obtained the coin you lost in the car yesterday,” she said at last, as if relieving her mind of a question that had been long subdued.

“The one you so kindly found for me?” he asked, procrastinatingly.

“Yes.  They are certainly rare in this country.”

“I never saw a coin like it until after I had seen you,” he confessed.  He felt her arm press his a, little tighter, and there was a quick movement of her head which told him, dark as it was, that she was trying to see his face and that her blue eyes were wide with something more than terror.

“I do not understand,” she exclaimed.

“I obtained the coin from a sleeping-car porter who said some one gave it to him and told him to have a ‘high time’ with it,” he explained in her ear.

“He evidently did not care for the ‘high time,’” she said, after a moment.  He would have given a fortune for one glimpse of her face at that instant.

“I think he said it would be necessary to go to Europe in order to follow the injunction of the donor.  As I am more likely to go to Europe than he, I relieved him of the necessity and bought his right to a ‘high time.’”

There was a long pause, during which she attempted to withdraw herself from his side, her little fingers struggling timidly beneath the big ones.

“Are you a collector of coins?” she asked at length, a perceptible coldness in her voice.

“No.  I am considered a dispenser of coins.  Still, I rather like the idea of possessing this queer bit of money as a pocket-piece.  I intend to keep it forever, and let it descend as an heirloom to the generations that follow me,” he said, laughingly.  “Why are you so curious about it?”

“Because it comes from the city and country in which I live,” she responded.  “If you were in a land far from your own would you not be interested in anything—­even a coin—­that reminded you of home?”

“Especially if I had not seen one of its kind since leaving home,” he replied, insinuatingly.

“Oh, but I have seen many like it.  In my purse there are several at this minute.”

“Isn’t it strange that this particular coin should have reminded you of home?”

“You have no right to question me, sir,” she said, coldly, drawing away, only to be lurched back again.  In spite of herself she laughed audibly.