The old man stood uncertainly on the stoop, and then removed his heavy black felt hat and rubbed his bald head and the white shining locks of hair around it with a red bandanna handkerchief. Then he walked very slowly across the street toward Snipes, for the rest of the street was empty, and there was no one else at hand. The old man was dressed in heavy black broadcloth, quaintly cut, with boot legs showing up under the trousers, and with faultlessly clean linen of home-made manufacture. “I can't make the people in that house over there hear me,” complained the old man, with the simple confidence that old age has in very young boys. “Do you happen to know if they're at home?” “Nop,” growled Snipes. “I'm looking for a man named Perceval,” said the stranger; “he lives in that house, and I wanter see him on most particular business. It isn't a very pleasing place he lives in, is it--at least,” he hurriedly added, as if fearful of giving offence, “it isn't much on the outside? Do you happen to know him?” Perceval was Alf Wolfe's business name. “Nop,” said the trailer. “Well, I'm not looking for him,” explained the stranger, slowly, “as much as I'm looking for a young man that I kind of suspect is been to see him to-day: a young man that looks like me, only younger. Has lightish hair and pretty tall and lanky, and carrying a shiny black bag with him. Did you happen to hev noticed him going into that place across the way?” “Nop,” said Snipes. The old man sighed and nodded his head thoughtfully at Snipes, and puckered up the corners of his mouth, as though he were thinking deeply. He had wonderfully honest blue eyes, and with the white hair hanging around his sun-burned face, he looked like an old saint. But the trailer didn't know that: he did know, though, that this man was a different sort from the rest. Still, that was none of his business. “What is't you want to see him about?” he asked sullenly, while he looked up and down the street and everywhere but at the old man, and rubbed one bare foot slowly over the other. The old man looked pained, and much to Snipe's surprise, the question brought the tears to his eyes, and his lips trembled. Then he swerved slightly, so that he might have fallen if Snipes had not caught him and helped him across the pavement to a seat on a stoop. “Thankey, son,” said the stranger; “I'm not as strong as I was, an' the sun's mighty hot, an' these streets of yours smell mighty bad, and I've had a powerful lot of trouble these last few days. But if I could see this man Perceval before my boy does, I know I could fix it, and it would all come out right.” “What do you want to see him about?” repeated the trailer, suspiciously, while he fanned the old man with his hat. Snipes could not have told you why he did this or why this particular old countryman was any different from the many others who came to buy counterfeit money and who were thieves at heart as well as in deed.