In the West, all roads run to or from Chicago. It is nearer to almost any place by the way of Chicago than by any other route: so Alice and I went to the city by the lake, as the beginning of our prospecting tour. I took her to the art gallery and showed her just where my two lovers had stood,--telling her the story for the first time. Then she wanted to eat a supper at Auriccio's; and after the play we went there, and I was forced to describe the whole scene over again. "Didn't she see you at all?" she asked. "Not at all," said I. "You are a good boy," said my wife, judging me by one act which she approved. "Kiss me." This occurred after we reached our lodgings. I suggested as a change of subject that my next day's engagements took me to the Stock Yards, and I assumed that she would scarcely wish to accompany me. "I think I prefer the stores," said she, "and the pictures. Maybe _I_ shall have an adventure." At the big Exchange Building, I found that the acquaintance whom I sought was absent from his office, and I roamed up and down the corridors in search of him. As usual the gathering here was intensely Western. There were bronzed cattlemen from every range from Amarillo to the Belle Fourche, sturdy buyers of swine from Iowa and Illinois, sombreroed sheepmen from New Mexico, and vikingesque Swedes from North Dakota. Men there were wearing thousand-dollar diamonds in red flannel shirts, solid gold watch-chains made to imitate bridle-bits, and heavy golden bullocks sliding on horse-hair guards. It pleased me, as such a crowd always does. The laughter was loud but it was free, and the hunted look one sees on State Street and Michigan Avenue was absent. "I wish Alice had come," said I, noting the flutter of skirts in a group of people in the corridor; and then, as I came near, the press divided, and I saw something which drew my eyes as to a sight in which lay mystery to be unraveled. Facing me stood a stout farmer in a dark suit of common cut and texture. He seemed, somehow, not entirely strange; but the petite figure of the girl whose back was turned to me was what fixed my attention. She wore a smart traveling-gown of some pretty gray fabric, and bore herself gracefully and with the air of dominating the group of commission men among whom she stood. I noted the incurved spine, the deep curves of the waist, and the liberal slope of the hips belonging to a shapely little woman in whom slimness was mitigated in adorable ways, which in some remote future bade fair to convert it into matronliness. Under a broad hat there showed a wealth of red-brown hair, drawn up like a sunburst from a slender little neck. "I have provided a box at Hooley's," said the head of a great commission firm. "Mrs. Johnson will be with us. We may count upon you?" "I think so," said the girl, "if papa hasn't made any engagements." The stout farmer blushed as he looked down at his daughter.