Skinner picked up the paper.
"See those initials, honey? 'D. C. D.'"
"I've noticed them."
"Old Mackensie, when he was a boy, came near starving to death. A reporter got hold of his case and printed a paragraph about it just like those you see every day. I got it on the quiet. Mackensie was saved by an anonymous friend who signed himself 'D. C. D.' He never could find out who it was. Several years passed. He watched the papers, but these initials never appeared again. So Mackensie concluded that his unknown savior was dead.
"But he made up his mind to pass the good deed along and here's the romance of it. He wants whoever it was that helped him to get all the credit for it. He wants him to be reminded—if he happens to be alive and 'broke'—that the good thought started is being pushed along. So to-day a newspaper tells a story of an unfortunate girl—a starving boy picked up by the police—a helpless widow—a friendless old man. The next day you read, 'Rec'd from D. C. D. $20.'—'D. C. D. $50'—as the case may be. That's old man Mackensie."
"And yet they say money kills romance." Honey's eyes shone with appreciation.
"And there's Solon Wright," Skinner went on, "another 'gold bug.' For years every night he has handed a dollar to a certain shambling fellow outside the ferry gate."
"How curious!"
"Briscom told me about it. The strange thing is, it's a man Wright used to detest when he was flush. He does n't like him even now. That's why he gives him the money. Moral discipline, the way he puts it. Can you beat it?"
As a result of these observations in the Pullman, Skinner jotted down in his little book:—