the pasty-faced feeders on fried breakfasts, snatchers of hasty
noon-meals, sleepers on gorged stomachs. About them he wove the glamour
of his words, the arch-seducer, until the dollars fidgeted in their
pockets.

"Just one dollar the bottle, and pain is banished. Eat? You can eat a
cord of hickory for breakfast, knots and all, and digest it in an hour.
The Vitalizing Mixture does it."

Assorted ills came next. In earlier spring it would have been pneumonia
and coughs. Now it was the ailments that we have always with us:
backache, headache, indigestion and always the magnificent promise. So
he picked up the final harvest, gleaning his field.

"Now,"--the rotund voice sunk into the confidential, sympathetic
register, yet with a tone of saddened rebuke,--"there are topics that
the lips shrink from when ladies are present. But I have a word for you
young men. Young blood! Ah, young blood, and the fire of life! For that
we pay a penalty. Yet we must not overpay the debt. To such as wish my
private advice--_private_, I say, and sacredly confidential--" He broke
off and leaned out over the railing. "Thousands have lived to bless the
name of Professor Certain, and his friendship, at such a crisis;
thousands, my friends. To such, I shall be available for consultation
from nine to twelve to-morrow, at the Moscow Hotel. Remember the time
and place. Men only. Nine to twelve. And all under the inviolable seal
of my profession."

Some quality of unexpressed insistence in the stranger--or was it the
speaker's own uneasiness of spirit?--brought back the roving, brilliant
eyes to the square face below.