CHAPTER I.
THE “DOWN-AND-OUTER.”
Elliot Nash walked leisurely down Hill Street, and at Sixth turned into Central Park. The diagonal walks of reddish-brown cement contrasted strangely with the graceful and feathery pepper trees, the wide-spreading, sturdy palms, and the profusion of scarlet geranium blossoms, the rainbow-hued hydrangea, and the climbing wistaria. A faint wind, tempered by the ocean and by the flood of California sunshine, brought the mist from the towering fountain against his cheeks.
“Dear old Los Angeles!” Nash murmured to himself, drinking deep of the beauty that nature had lavished about him. “I’m surely glad to get back here—even if I am about——”
He broke off with a shrug, and continued slowly along between the rows of peopled benches, hands in his pockets. With a sudden determination, he turned into one of the narrower walks and sank down on the nearest bench, barely glancing at its solitary occupant, who seemed interested in a book. Behind him, a bed of heliotrope sent up a faint and soothing odor, which, after a time, lulled Nash into half a doze.
He was awakened abruptly by a hand falling upon his arm. Turning, he found the man beside him on the bench had closed his book and had moved nearer.
“Say, partner,” the man was saying, in a peculiar, husky voice, “would you be willin’ to give a lift to a fellow that’s up against it?”
Nash studied the other with interest. He bore the marks of the professional “down-and-outer,” from his patched, unlaced shoes to the usual puffy and stubbled face. At the same time, Nash noticed the book lying in his lap.
“What’s the matter with you?” Nash asked.
“Matter?” The stranger laughed bitterly. “What you askin’ that for? Don’t I look the answer? I’m down and out, and ain’t got a copper. This cussed town has pumped me dry, jus’ like it does all the rest of the fools what come out here to find a—paradise. I’m tryin’ to get enough coin together to beat it back to God’s country.”
“Where’s that?”