And he was off to his own little room where he conducted his own
business in his own primitive but highly efficacious way. A
corps of expert accountants could not have disentangled those
crabbed, criss-crossed figures; no solver of puzzles could have
unravelled the mystery of those strange hieroglyphics. But to
the old man there wasn't a difficult--or a dull--mark in that
entire set of dirty, dog-eared little account books. He spent
hours in poring over them. Just to turn the pages gave him keen
pleasure; to read, and to reconstruct from those hints the whole
story of some agitating and profitable operation, made in
comparison the delight of an imaginative boy in Monte Cristo or
Crusoe seem a cold and tame emotion.

David talked on and on, fancying that Jane was listening and
admiring, when in fact she was busy with her own entirely
different train of thought. She kept the young man going because
she did not wish to be bored with her own solitude, because a man
about always made life at least a little more interesting than if
she were alone or with a woman, and because Davy was good to look
at and had an agreeable voice.

``Why, who's that?'' she suddenly exclaimed, gazing off to the
right.

Davy turned and looked. ``I don't know her,'' he said. ``Isn't
she queer looking--yet I don't know just why.''

``It's Selma Gordon,'' said Jane, who had recognized Selma the
instant her eyes caught a figure moving across the lawn.