After this my regular walk was through the street of the baby-school, and when I was so fortunate as to meet Miss Leigh she bowed and smiled to me, though only as a passing acquaintance, whilst I on my part began to plan how I should secure an introduction to her. Her smile was sunshine enough for a day, but I wanted the right to bask in it and I meant to devise a plan. After what I had told Peck, I could not present my letter; I must find some other means. It came in an unexpected way, and through the last person I should have imagined as my sponsor. XX MY FIRST CLIENT But to revert to the morning when I made Miss Leigh's fire for her. I hunted for Dix all day, but without success, and was so busy about it that I did not have time to begin my search for Jeams. That evening, as it was raining hard, I treated myself to the unwonted luxury of a ride home on a street-car. The streets were greasy with a thick, black paste of mud, and the smoke was down on our heads in a dark slop. Like Petrarch, my thoughts were on Laura, and I was repining at the rain mainly because it prevented the possibility of a glimpse of Miss Leigh on the street: a chance I was ever on the watch for. I boarded an open car just after it started and just before it ran through a short subway. The next moment a man who had run after the car sprang on the step beside me, and, losing his footing, he would probably have fallen and might have been crushed between the car and the edge of the tunnel, which we at that moment were entering, had I not had the good fortune, being on the outer seat, to catch him and hold him up. Even as it was, his coat was torn and my elbow was badly bruised against the pillar at the entrance. I, however, pulled him over across my knees and held him until we had gone through the subway, when I made room for him on the seat beside me. "That was a close call, my friend," I said. "Don't try that sort of thing too often." "It was, indeed--the closest I ever had, and I have had some pretty close ones before. If you had not caught me, I would have been in the morgue to-morrow morning." This I rather repudiated, but as the sequel showed, the idea appeared to have become fixed in his mind. We had some little talk together and I discovered that, like myself, he had come out West to better his fortune, and as he was dressed very plainly, I assumed that, like myself, he had fallen on rather hard times, and I expressed sympathy. "Where have I seen you before?" I asked him. "On the train once coming from the East." "Oh! yes." I remembered now. He was the man who knew things. "You know Mr. McSheen?" he asked irrelevantly. "Yes--slightly. I have an office in the same building." I wondered how he knew that I knew him. "Yes. Well, you want to look out for him. Don't let him fool you. He's deep. What's that running down your sleeve? Why, it's blood! Where did it come from?" He looked much concerned.