to the house."

He was not so solitary as he looked. Besides Pancha Lopez he had met
other people. The wife of the manager of the Argonaut Hotel had asked him
to a card party, found him "a delightful gentleman" and handed him on to
her friends. They too had found him "a delightful gentleman" and the
handing on had continued. He enjoyed it, slipping comfortably into the
new environment--it was a change after the sinister years beyond the
pale, and the horrible, outcast days. Also he did not confine himself to
the small sociabilities to which he was handed on. There were many paths
of profit and pleasure in the city by the Golden Gate and he explored any
that offered entertainment--those that led to tables green as grass under
the blaze of electric lights, those that led to the poker game behind
Soledad Lanza's pink-fronted restaurant, those that led up alleys to
dark, secretive doors, and that which led to Pancha's ugly sitting room.

He sought this one often and yet for all his persuasive cunning he found
out nothing, got no further, surprised no admissions. He was drawn back
there teased and wondering and went away again, piqued and baffled.

One evening, a month after her first meeting with him, Pancha, going home
on the car, thought about her father. She felt guilty, for of late she
had rather forgotten him and this was something new and blameworthy. Now
she remembered how long it was since she had seen him and that his last
letter had come over a month ago. It was a short scrawl from Downieville
and had told her that the sale of his prospect hole--he had hoped to
sell it sometime early in September--had fallen through. He had seemed
down-hearted.

Despite the divergent lines of their lives a great tie of affection