Fate in playful mood had selected him as the third member of our party.

He was more upset than I and made a strenuous effort to be assigned to some other room. But with all his money he could not manage it, and we set out on our homeward journey together. I would see him when I came in late at night, lying there in his berth with the light from the deck outside on his yellow face, his eyes closed-but wide awake. I think he was afraid of me. He had reason to be.

Anyhow, I was rid of his slimy presence now, there in that dim pier shed. It was one thing to be thankful for. And already the memory of what he had done to me was fading-for I had suffered a later and deeper wound. In the midst of the trouble with Drew, I had met the most wonderful girl in the world, and only a moment before, on the deck of the China boat, I had said good-bye to her forever.

I left the pier shed and stepped to the sidewalk outside. The air was heavy and wet with fog, the walk damp and slippery; water dripped down from telegraph wires overhead. I saw the blurred lights of the city, heard its ceaseless grumble, the clang of street-cars, the clatter of wheels on cobblestones. Weird mysterious figures slipped by me; strange faces peered into mine and were gone. This was the Embarcadero, the old Barbary Coast famed round the world. Somewhere there, lost in the fog, were its dance-halls, where rovers of the broad Pacific had, in the vanished past, made merry after a sodden fashion. I stood, straining to see.

"Want a taxi, mister?" asked a dim figure at my side.

"If you can find one," I answered. "Things seem a bit thick."

"It's the tule-fog," he told me. "Drifts down every year about this time from the tule-fields between here and Sacramento. Never knew one to stick around so late in the day before. Yes, sir-this is sure unusual."

In reply to my query he told me that the tule was a sort of bulrush. And little Moses amid his bulrushes could have felt no more lost than I did at that moment.

"See what you can dig up," I ordered.

"You just wait here," he said. "It'll take time. Don't go away."

Again I stood alone amid the strange shadow-shapes that came and went. Somewhere, behind that fog-curtain, the business of the town went on as usual. I made a neat pile of my luggage close to a telegraph pole and sat down to wait. My mind went back to the deck of the boat I had left, to Mary Will Tellfair, that wonderful girl.

And she was wonderful-in courage and in charm. I had met her three weeks before in Shanghai; and it was her dark hour, as it was mine. For Mary Will had come five thousand miles to marry Jack Paige, her sweetheart from a sleepy southern town. She had not seen him for six years, but there had been many letters, and life at home was dull. Then, too, she had been very fond of him once, I judge. So there had been parties, and jokes, and tears, and Mary Will had sailed for Shanghai and her wedding.

It has happened to other girls, no doubt. Young Paige met her boat.