My efforts were rewarded by the strange side-long glance he gave me and when, shortly after, I began to speak of pirates he left me suddenly. Later, I noticed the porter and the Pullman Car conductor regarding me with interest. When, before the trip was over, I gained the porter's confidence (at reasonable cost) I learned that the old man with the white whiskers had told them I was crazy--that I talked wildly of most extraordinary things. Evidently the old boy was not Uncle Abner's heir, after all. That evening after dinner I took out the letter and the map and studied them with care. The more I did so the more ridiculous they seemed. There is something indescribably grotesque in starting off to hunt for buried treasure in an electric lighted Limited. I felt that I ought to be dressed in Oriental togs with a red handkerchief about my head and a pair of flint-lock pistols in my belt. When the girl with the long lashes passed and glanced in my direction with cold, unseeing eyes, I felt more ridiculous than ever. How could a man hunt gold, I asked myself, with girls like that abroad? And immediately two impulses seized me. "Graham Stewart and the treasure be hanged!" I resolved, crumpling Uncle Abner's chart in my hand. "I'll go back in the Pullman and have a look at the young lady--even if I can't talk with her." But as I walked through the train I smoothed out the map and laid it away in my wallet. When convention and the girl frown, I might as well have something, I thought, to fall back on. She was sitting with some magazines in her lap, gazing vacantly into the night. I passed without apparently noticing her and sat dejectedly in my section. Man's sadness will awaken a woman's interest where nothing else will, you know. And before long the corners of my eyes caught a suspicion of sympathy in her regard, as if she read trouble in the countenance I was furrowing for her, and was sorry. Without seeming to look in her direction I sighed the manliest sigh I could muster. I seemed to feel her sympathy deepen to pity and then--crash! Her magazines slid to the floor. I sprang to collect them for her. But confound these women prigs!--that was all. She thanked me haughtily, rang for the porter and ordered her berth made up. I went forward for a smoke, was drawn into a game, and forgot about treasure and stingy, sneaking cousins and disagreeable eye-lash girls until late the next morning. [Illustration: Leon de Bernebruch's Idea of the Heroine.]