Presently he came to a window before which he paused in delighted wonder.  It was not a large window; to the casual eye of the passer-by there was little to draw attention.  By day it lighted the fractional floor space of a little stationer, who supplemented a slim business by a sub-agency for railroad and steamship lines; but to-night this window seemed the framework of a marvel of coincidence.  On the broad, dusty sill inside were propped two cards:  the one on the left was his own red-lettered announcement for the week; the one at the right—­oh, world of wonders!—­was a photogravure of that exact stretch of the inner coast of Florida which Gideon knew best, which was home.

There it was, the Indian River, rippling idly in full sunlight, palmettos leaning over the water, palmettos standing as irregular sentries along the low, reeflike island which stretched away out of the picture.  There was the gigantic, lonely pine he knew well, and, yes—­he could just make it out—­there was his own ramshackle little pier, which stretched in undulating fashion, like a long-legged, wading caterpillar, from the abrupt shore-line of eroded coquina into deep water.

He thought at first that this picture of his home was some new and delicate device put forth by his press-agent.  His name on one side of a window, his birthplace upon the other—­what could be more tastefully appropriate?  Therefore, as he spelled out the reading-matter beneath the photogravure, he was sharply disappointed.  It read: 

      Spend this winter in balmy Florida. 
    Come to the Land of Perpetual Sunshine. 
Golf, tennis, driving, shooting, boating, fishing, all of the best.

There was more, but he had no heart for it; he was disappointed and puzzled.  This picture had, after all, nothing to do with him.  It was a chance, and yet, what a strange chance!  It troubled and upset him.  His black, round-featured face took on deep wrinkles of perplexity.  The “misery” which had hung darkly on his horizon for weeks engulfed him without warning.  But in the very bitterness of his melancholy he knew at last his disease.  It was not champagne or recreation that he needed, not even a “po’k-chop,” although his desire for it had been a symptom, a groping for a too homeopathic remedy:  he was homesick.

Easy, childish tears came into his eyes, and ran over his shining cheeks.  He shivered forlornly with a sudden sense of cold, and absently clutched at the lapels of his gorgeous, fur-lined ulster.

Then in abrupt reaction he laughed aloud, so that the shrill, musical falsetto startled the passers-by, and in another moment a little semicircle of the curious watched spellbound as a black man, exquisitely appareled, danced in wild, loose grace before the dull background of a somewhat grimy and apparently vacant window.  A newsboy recognized him.

He heard his name being passed from mouth to mouth, and came partly to his senses.  He stopped dancing, and grinned at them.