"Oh, dear me, the masculine mind does work more deliberately than ours, doesn't it? At all events, I think it is something to go on, if not absolute proof. Let me see; first the trunk with the same initials, next the cravat, then the card. One doesn't expect to meet three such coincidences and gain no result, does one? Eliminate two, and you still have one pretty good proof, I should say. What are you going to do next, pending Berk's return? You surely don't mean to sit down and twiddle your thumbs?" "No, hardly. I think I will go up to the city and interview the express people. If this is really my trunk, it may be superfluous to make the trip, but it will give me something to do, and may bring about some satisfactory conclusion." "It isn't a bad move," returned Miss Ri. "You know the date, I suppose, and no doubt they have some record." "That is what I am hoping for. If I only knew the number, which they must have marked on the trunk, it would help." "How would it do to follow up Berk? You could probably find out where the judge is going; it may be his family can tell. Suppose we stop by and see what Mrs. Baker can tell us?" But the Baker family were all in the city and that clue was dropped. Then the two returned to Miss Ri's and bethought themselves of getting Berkley on the telephone, but this, too, failed. He had been to the hotel, in a certain little town, which they called up, but had departed. Where was he going next? "Couldn't say." "That clips off one thread," said Miss Ri, putting down the receiver. "You'd better go to town, after all. It will keep you occupied, and it is always a relief to be doing something, when one must wait. You'd get there quicker by taking the train, but the boat is cheaper, and I don't know that you would gain anything by starting earlier, for it would be too late to accomplish anything if you did get in this evening. You'll report progress, of course, when you get back?" "Surely." Miss Ri watched him depart, and then sat for a long time pondering over the situation. Why should she interest herself in a stranger? And supposing it were so that he found his papers and proved his claim, mightn't that mean loss to Linda; or if not to her, to someone they all had known as a neighbor? It might possibly be Talbot's Angles. No, that couldn't be, thought Miss Ri, for everyone knows it belonged to Jim Talbot and his father before him. Well, it is all very puzzling, and Linda may yet have her chance. Grace is just the silly kind of pretty woman to attract some blind bat of a man. There comes my girlie; I must tell her all the news. "It's the greatest comfort in the world to have someone in the house I can gossip to," she said as Linda entered. "I don't know what I did before you came." "Stepped out the back way to Miss Parthy."