Evening star., 1913-06-15

that was stirring IN him again, perhaps 1t
WAS something older and more universal:
but that Fate had interviewed again had
given him a message and direction, it
never occurred to him to doubt.
He had played fair. He hadn't even asked
the landlady where Pamela lived. But now
the breeze had told him-brought him his
sailing orders
1t was reasonable enough, he thought,
when he was sufficiently down to earth to
begin thinking again, even the Oklahoma
side OF him could assent to that. She hadn't
anv home, in a sentimental sense. She had
told him that herself But everybody must
have at least n starting point to travel from,
and it seemed likely in the circumstances
that she would return there now. But he
acknowledged to himself. with grin, that
even if it had not been reasonable he'd have
gone just the same.
Next dav he searched the decks, the
loon, and afterward the passenger list of the
big liner, in the unacknowledged hope of
finding Pamela-just as Pamela, few days
later, was to search for him.
He was not surprised hardly dlsap-
pointed-at not finding her. The message
had said Chicago. and it was there that his
search must begin.
RUT what a place for such a message as
- that to send him! Before he had been
in Chicago twenty-four hours he felt like q
man rudely awakened from a fantastic
dream. The witchery of moonlight and
hedge-bordered lanes and gray churchyards
and ghosts seemed to belong to another
planet altogether from one that could con-
tam a city like this 1t wasn't only that it
was so big. London wouldn't have given
him the same feelin, But it was SO COM
nonsense and proSalc and rectangular. I'm
agine hoping that Fate would lead you to a
person in a street that had been laid out with
a ruler twenty-eight miles long! In Chicago,
when people wante1 things done, they did
them for themselves
SO, with heavy heart, he set about trying
to find Pamela by modern, commonsense
methods. He searched the directories and
the telephone books. He made the rounds
of the downtown hotels and consulted the
registers He walked the downtown streets
and mOtored over uncOunted miles of boule
wards and avenues, traced out dozens of IL
lusurv clues and pursued misleading reSern-
blances.
He stood it for three or four days, then
gave it up. If he was to find her, he would
find her; but it would not be by this kind
OF search
Then he tried letting himself drift, trust
Ing himself to the swlrling currents of life
and letting them take MIN Wnere they would;
but it was almost as hard as the other.
He bought an automobile one morning,
and thereafter Contrived a sort of routine
that passed the days a little more tolerably.
He spent the mornings driving about the
streets, the afternoons making excursions
here and there into the country. He always
got back to the hotel, though, in time to
dress and dine and go to the theater The
Stiffness of the night out under the stars was
too much for him. 1t brought back men,
cries so poignant that they were intolerable.
When he had been in town a week it
seemed like year. But at last there came
!; day, the ninth since his arrival in town,
that started out differently.
HE was reading his paper rather listlessly,
along with his breakfast. The news
didn't interest him much; but among the
classified advertisements, halfway down the
personal column, his eye found something
that arrested it,-a little half-inch adver-
tScment signed with a newspaper box num-
Der He read it twice, then cut it out and
tucked itfnto his waistcoat pocket
1t would he mild little adventure at the
best; but at worst it would give him some
thing to think about besides the thing that
was so perSistentlv in hil'mind He didn't