"What kind of ear-marks has he got?" persisted Miss Grierson—merely to make talk, as Dahlgren decided.
"I don't know. We were talking about him around at the club the other night, and Sheffield—he's from Kentucky, you know—thought he remembered the name as the name of a 'moonshine' raider he'd heard of down in his home State."
"A moonshine raider? What is that?" By this time Miss Margery's curiosity was less inert than it had been, or had seemed to be, at first.
"A deputy marshal, you know; a sort of Government policeman and detective rolled into one. He looks it, don't you think?"
Miss Grierson did not say what she thought, then, or later, when she set Dahlgren down at the door of his newspaper office in Sioux Avenue. But still later, two hours later, in fact, she gave a brief audience in the Mereside library to a small, barefooted boy whose occupation was sufficiently indicated by the bundle of evening papers hugged under one arm.
"Well, Johnnie; what did you find out?" she asked.
"Ain't had time," said the boy. "But he ain't no milyunaire lumber-shooter, I'll bet a nickel. I sold him a pape' jes' now, down by Dutchie's lumber yard, and I ast him what kind o' lumber that was in the pile by the gate. He didn't know, no more'n a goat."
Miss Margery filliped a coin in the air and the newsboy caught it dexterously.
"That will do nicely for a beginning, Johnnie," she said sweetly. "Come and see me every once in a while, and perhaps there'll be more little white cart-wheels for you. Only don't tell; and don't let him catch you. That's all."