"But an untenable one. And Fortune is equally elusive to those who seek her over-persistently. The truth, as usual, lies between the extremes." "Well?" "The secret is simple enough. He who is ready to receive, receives. Love, fame, the shower of gold--they are in the air, and only waiting to be precipitated. I stand ready to be amused, and that same afternoon the Evening Post aims a blow at the Tammany 'Tiger' over the shoulder of Mr. Edward M. Shepard; I am in the mood adventurous, and instantly the shadow of a prodigy falls across my threshold; yea, though I live on upper West End Avenue. Do you remember this?" and he held out a small Yale latch-key. "It is the one you picked up at Twenty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue last night." "Precisely. Now a key, you observe, is intended to open something--in this case a door. What door? As though that mattered! Put on your rain-coat, my dear Thorp, and let us begin a little journey into the unknown. Fate will lead us surely, O unbelieving one, if you will but place your hand unresistingly in hers." We left the house, and Indiman tossed a penny into the air. "Broadway, heads; Fourth Avenue, tails." Tails it was. Arrived at Fourth Avenue, we stood waiting for a car. The first that came along was on its way up-town and we boarded it. "Was it you who asked for a cross-town transfer at Twenty-ninth?" inquired the conductor of Indiman a few minutes later, and Indiman nodded assent and took the transfer slips. At Eighth Avenue the cross-town car was blocked by a stalled coal-cart. We alighted and passively awaited further directions from our esoteric guide. Quite an amusing game for a dull, rainy afternoon, and I felt grateful to Indiman for its invention. The policeman on the corner was endeavoring to direct a very small boy with a very large bundle. "Up one block and turn east," he said, impressively. "I've told you that now three times." I had a flash of inspiration. "Copper it," I cried. "Right," said Indiman, soberly. We walked down one block to Twenty-eighth Street and then turned westward. New York is a big city, and therefore entitled to present an occasional anomaly to the observant eye. And this particular section of Twenty-eighth Street is one of these departures from the normal, a block or two of respectable, even handsome houses set as an oasis in a dull and sordid neighborhood. How and why this should be does not matter; it is to be presumed that the people who live there are satisfied, and it is nobody else's business. We walked on slowly, then, half-way down the block, Indiman stopped me. "What did I tell you?" he whispered. The house was of the English basement type, and occupied two of the ordinary city lots; nothing particularly remarkable about that, and I said as much.