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At two o’clock, Andy stopped suddenly and stared down at a crack in the pavement, and his lips moved in muttered speech. “She’s worked three years in one of them places–and she ‘thoroughly detests falsehood in any form’! Hell!” Is exactly what he was saying out loud, on one of the busiest streets in San Jose.

A policeman glanced at him, looked again and came slowly toward him. Andy took the hint and moved on decorously to the next bulletin-board, but the revelation that had come to him there in the street dulled somewhat his alertness, so that he came near committing himself to the purchase of one of those ubiquitous “five-room, modern cottages with bath” before he realized what he was doing and fled to the street again, on the pretense that he had to catch the car which was just slowing down for that crossing.

He boarded the car, though he had no idea of where it was going, and fished in his pocket for a nickel. And just when he was reaching up from the step where he stood clinging–reaching over the flower-piled hat of a girl, to place the nickel in the outstretched palm of the conductor, he heard for the first time in many weeks the name of Mary Johnson. A girl at his elbow was asking the other: “What’n the world’s become of Mary Johnson? She wasn’t to the dance last night, and it’s the first one–“

Andy held his breath.

“Oh, Mame quit her place with Kelly and Gray, two weeks ago. She’s gone to Santa Cruz and got a place for the summer. Her and Lola Parsons went together, and–“

Andy took advantage of another crossing, and dropped off. He wanted to find out when the next train left for Santa Cruz. It never occurred to him that there might be two Mary Johnsons in the world, which was fortunate, perhaps; he wasted no time in hesitation, and so, within twenty minutes, he was hearing the wheels of a fast train go clickety-click, clickety-click over the switches in the suburbs of San Jose, and he was asking the conductor what time the train would reach Santa Cruz, and was getting snubbed for his anxiety.

Santa Cruz, when he did reach it, seemed, on a superficial examination, to be almost as large as San Jose, and the real-estate offices closer together and even more plentifully supplied with modern cottages and bath–and the heart of him sank prophetically. For the first time since he dropped off the street-car in San Jose, it seemed to him that Mary Johnson was quite as far off, quite as unattainable as she had ever been.

He walked slowly up Pacific Avenue and watched the hurrying crowds, and wondered if chance would be kind to him; if he should meet her on the street, perhaps. He did not want to canvass all the real-estate offices in town. “It would take me till snow flies,” he murmured dispiritedly, forgetting that here was a place where snow never flew, and sought a hotel where they were not “full to the eaves” as two complacent clerks had already told him.

At supper, he made friends with a genial-voiced insurance agent–the kind who does not insist upon insuring your life whether you want it insured or not. The agent told Andy to call him Jack and use him good and plenty–perhaps because something wistful and lonely in the gray eyes of Andy appealed to him–and Andy took him at his word and was grateful. He discovered what day of the week it was: Saturday, and that on the next day Santa Cruz would be “wide-open” because of an excursion from Sacramento. Jack offered to help him lose himself in the crowd, and again Andy was grateful. For the first time since leaving the Flying U he went to bed feeling not utterly alone and friendless, and awoke pleasantly expectant. Friend Jack was to pilot him down to the Casino at eleven, and he had incidentally made one prediction which stuck closely to Andy, even in his sleep. Jack had assured him that the whole town would be at the beach; and if the whole town were at the beach, why then, Mary would surely be somewhere in the crowd. And if she were in the crowd–“If she’s there, I’ll sure get a line on her before night,” Andy told himself, with much assurance. “A fellow that’s been in the habit of cutting any certain brand of critter out of a big herd ought to be able to spot his girl in a crowd”–and he hummed softly while he dressed.