until now, had a chance to exchange six words.

The newcomer, who announced himself as Milton Keith from Baltimore, proved
to have a likable and engaging personality. He was bubbling with interest
and enthusiasm; and these qualities, provided they are backed solidly, are
always prepossessing. Sherwood, quietly studying him, concluded that such
was the case. His jaw and mouth were set in firm lines; his eye, while
dancing and mischievous, had depths of capability and reserves of
forcefulness. But Sherwood was, by inclination and by the necessities of
his profession, a close observer of men. Another, less practised, might
have seen here merely an eager, rather talkative, apparently volatile, very
friendly, quite unreserved young man of twenty-five. Any one, analytical or
otherwise, could not have avoided feeling the attractive force of the
youth's personality, the friendly quality that is nine tenths individual
magnetism and one tenth the cast of mind that initially takes for granted
the other man's friendliness.

At the moment Keith was boyishly avid for the sights of the new city. In
these modern days of long journeys, a place so remote as San Francisco, in
the most commonplace of circumstances, gathers to its reputation something
of the fabulous. How much more true then of a city built from sand dunes in
four years; five times swept by fire, yet rising again and better before
its ashes were extinct; the resort of all the picturesque, unknown races of
the earth--the Chinese, the Chileno, the Mexican, the Spanish, the
Islander, the Moor, the Turk--not to speak of ordinary foreigners from
Russia, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the out-of-the-way
corners of Europe; the haunt of the wild and striking individuals of all
these races. "Sydney ducks" from the criminal colonies; "shoulder strikers"
direct from the tough wards of New York; long, lean, fever-haunted crackers
from the Georgia mountains or the Louisiana canebrakes; Pike County