was willing to enter into his friend's mood.

"Have you ever tried to swallow it?" asked North.

"I can't say I have. Some of us haven't any business with a conscience—our blood's too red. I've made up my mind that, while I may be a man of moral impulses I am also a creature of purest accident. It's the same with you, Jack. You are a pretty decent fellow down under the skin; there's still the divine spark in you, though perhaps it doesn't burn bright enough to warm the premises. But it's there, like a shaft of light from a gem, a gem in the rough—though I believe I'm mixing my metaphors."

"Why don't you say a pearl in the mire?"

"But that doesn't really take from your pearlship, though it may dim your luster. No, Jack, the accidents have been to your morals instead of your arms and legs. That's how I explain it in my own case, and it's saved me many a bad quarter of an hour with myself. I know I'd be on crutches if the vicissitudes of which I have been the victim could be given physical expression."

"Marsh," said North soberly, "I am going away."

"You are going to do what, Jack?" demanded the lawyer.

"I am going to leave Mount Hope. I am going West for a bit, and after I am gone I want you to sell the stuff in my rooms for me; have an auction and get rid of every stick of the fool truck!"

"Why, what's wrong? Going away—when?"

"At once, to-morrow—to-night maybe. I don't know quite when, but very soon. I want you to get rid of all my stuff, do you understand? Before long I'll write you my address and you can send me whatever it brings. I expect I'll need the money—"

"Why, you're crazy, man!" cried Langham.

North moved impatiently. He had not come to discuss the merit of his plans.

"On the contrary I am having my first gleam of reason," he said briefly.

"Of course you know best, Jack," acquiesced Langham after a moment's silence.

"You'll do what I ask of you, Marsh?"

"Oh, hang it, yes." He hesitated for an instant and then said 'frankly. "You know I'm rather in your debt; I don't suppose five hundred dollars would square what I have had from you first and last."

"I hope you won't mention it! Whenever it is quite convenient, that will be soon enough."

"Thank you, Jack!" said Langham gratefully. "The fact is the pickings here are pretty small."

Again the lawyer mopped his brow and again North moved impatiently.

"Don't say another word about it, Marsh," he repeated. "McBride has agreed to take the last of my gas bonds off my hands; that will get me away from here."

"How many have you left?" asked Langham curiously.

"Ten," said North.

Langham whistled.

"Do you mean to tell me you are down to that? Why, you told me once you held a hundred!"

"So I did once, but it costs money to be the kind of fool I've been! said North.

"Well, I suppose you are doing the sensible thing in getting out of this. Have you any notion where you are going or what you'll do?"

North shook his head.

"Oh, you'll get into something!" the lawyer encouraged. "When shall you see McBride?"

"This afternoon. Why?"

"I was going to say that I was just there with Atkinson. He and McBride have been in a timber speculation, and Atkinson handed over three thousand dollars in cash to the old man. I suppose he has banked it in some heap of scrap-iron on the premises!" said Langham laughing.

"I think I shall go there now," resolved North. While he was speaking he had moved to the door leading into the hail, and had opened it.

"Hold on, John!" said Langham, detaining him. "Evelyn is home. She came quite unexpectedly to-day; you won't leave town without getting up to the house to see her?"

"I think I shall," replied North hastily. "I much prefer not to say good-by."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Langham.

"No, Marsh, I don't intend to say good-by to any one!" North quietly turned back into the room.

"I had intended having you up to the house to-night for a blow-out," urged Langham, but North shook his head. "You and Gilmore, Jack; and by the way, this puts me in a nice hole! I have already asked Gilmore, and he's coming. Now, how the devil am to get out of it? I can't spring him alone on the family circle, and I don't want to hurt his feelings!"

"Call it off, Marsh; say I couldn't come; that's a good enough excuse to give Gilmore. Why, that fellow's a common card-sharp, you can't ask Evelyn to meet him!"

A slight noise in the hall caused both men to glance toward the door, where they saw just beyond the threshold the swarthy-faced Gilmore.

There was a brief embarrassed silence, and then North nodded to the new-comer, but the salutation was not returned.

"Well, good-by, Marsh!" he said, and turned to the door. As he brushed past the gambler their eyes met for an instant, and in that instant Gilmore's face turned livid with rage.

"I'll fix you for that, so help me God, I will!" he said, but North made no answer. He passed down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the street.

McBride's was directly opposite on the corner of High Street and the Square; a mean two-story structure of frame, across the shabby front of which hung a shabby creaking sign bearing witness that within might be found: "Archibald McBride, Hardware and Cutlery, Implements and Bar Iron." McBride had kept store on that corner time out of mind.

He was an austere unapproachable old man, having no relatives of whom any one knew; with few friends and fewer intimates; a rich man, according to the Mount Hope standard, and a miser according to the Mount Hope gossip, with the miser's traditional suspicion of banks. It was rumored that he had hidden away vast sums of money in his dingy store, or in the closely-shuttered rooms above, where the odds and ends of the merchandise in which he dealt had accumulated in rusty and neglected heaps.

The old man wore an air of mystery, and this air of mystery extended to his place of business. It was dark and dirty and ill-kept. On the brightest summer day the sunlight stole vaguely in through grimy cobwebbed windows. The dust of years had settled deep on unused shelves and, in abandoned corners, and whole days were said to pass when no one but the ancient merchant himself entered the building. Yet in spite of the trade that had gone elsewhere he had grown steadily richer year by year.

When North entered the store he found McBride busy with his books in his small back office, a lean black cat asleep on the desk at his elbow.

"Good afternoon, John!" said the old merchant as he turned from his high desk, removing as he did so a pair of heavy steel-rimmed spectacles, that dominated a high-bridged nose which in turn dominated a wrinkled and angular face.

"I thought I should find you here!" said North.

"You'll always find me here of a week-day," and he gave the young fellow the fleeting suggestion of a smile. He had a liking for North, whose father, years before, had been one of the few friends he had made in Mount Hope.

The Norths had been among the town's earliest settlers, John's grandfather having taken his place among the pioneers when Mount Hope had little but its name to warrant its place on the map. At his death Stephen, his only son, assumed the family headship, married, toiled, thrived and finished his course following his wife to the old burying-ground after a few lonely heart-breaking months, and leaving John without kin, near or far, but with a good name and fair riches.

"I have brought you those gas bonds, Mr. McBride," said North, going at once to the purpose of his visit.

The old merchant nodded understandingly.

"I hope you can arrange to let me have the money for them to-day," continued North.

"I think I can manage it, John. Atkinson and Judge Langham's boy, Marsh, were just here and left a bit of cash. Maybe I can make up the sum." While he was speaking, he had gone to the safe which stood open in one corner of the small