wait for clients that may never come. I am going to do something."

CHAPTER III.

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The Timely Oracle.

A year passed by. Caruthers dozed with his cob pipe between the fingers of his limp hand, waiting for clients whose step was not heard upon the stairs. But the office had not been wholly without business. Once a man called to seek advice, which was given, free, as an advertisement for more work from his neighborhood, and once Lyman had defended a man charged with the theft of a sheep. The mutton was found in the fellow's closet and the hide of the animal was discovered under his bed; and with such evidence against him it was not expected that a lawyer could do much, so, when the prisoner was sentenced to the penitentiary, Caruthers congratulated his partner with the remark: "That was all right. We can't expect to win every time. But we were not so badly defeated; you got him off with one year, and he deserved two. To cut a thief's sentence in two ought to help us."

"Among the other thieves," Lyman suggested.

"Oh, yes," Caruthers spoke up cheerfully. "A lawyer's success depends largely upon his reputation among thieves."

"Or at least among the men who intend to stretch the law. Let me see; we have been in business together just one year, and our books balance with a most graceful precision. We are systematic, anyway."

"Yes," Caruthers replied, letting his pipe fall to the floor, "system is my motto. No business, properly systematized, is often better than some business in a tangle."

Warren, the editor, appeared at the door. "Are you busy?" he asked.

"Well, we are not in what you might call a rush," Lyman answered. "Are you busy?" he inquired, with a twinkle in his eye.

Before answering, Warren stepped into the room and sat down with a distressful sigh. "I am more than that," he said, dejectedly. "I am in hot water, trying to swim with one hand."

"What's the trouble?"

"Oh, a sort of summer, fall, spring and winter complaint." He took out a note book, turned over the leaves, returned it to his pocket and said: "I lack just sixty-five, this time."

"Dollars?" Lyman asked.

Warren gave him a quick, reproachful look. "Now, Judge, what airs have I ever put on to cause you to size me up that way? Have I ever shown any tax receipts? Have I ever given any swell dinners? Sixty-five cents is the amount I am short, Judge, and where I am to get it, the Lord only knows. My paper is lying over yonder in the express office, doing no good to anybody, but they won't let me take it out and stamp intelligence upon it. The town sits gaping for the news, with a bad eye on me; but what can I do with a great corporation arrayed against me? For sixty-five cents I could get the paper out, and it's full of bright things. The account of your defense of the sheep thief is about as amusing a thing as I ever read, and it will be copied all over the country; it would put a nation in a good humor irrespective of party affiliations, but sixty-five millions of people are to be cheated, and all on account of sixty-five cents, one cent to the million."

"Things are down to a low mark when you have to make your estimates on that basis. One cent to the million," said Lyman with a quiet laugh.

"Distressful," Warren replied. "The country was never in such a fix before. Why, last year about this time I raised eighty cents without any trouble at all."

"Yes," said Lyman, "you raised it of me."

"That's a fact," Warren admitted. "But do you think the country is as well off now as it was then?"

"Not financially, but it may be wiser."

"Now, look here, Judge, am I to accept this as an insinuation?"

"How so?" Lyman asked, looking up, his eyes full of mischief.

"Why, speaking of being wiser. I don't know but you meant—well, that you were too wise to help me out again. You can't deny that the notice of the partnership was all right."

"We have no complaint to enter on that ground," Caruthers drawled.

"Pardon me, Chancellor, but it wasn't your put-in," Warren replied. "Your suggestions are worth money and you ought not to throw them away. But the question is, can I get sixty-five cents out of this firm?"

"Warren," said Lyman, "I am in sympathy with your cheerful distress."

"But are you willing to shoulder the debt of sixty-five millions of people? Are you in a position to do that?"

"No," Caruthers drawled, leaning over with a strain and picking up his pipe from the floor.

"Chancellor," said the editor, "as wise as you are, your example is sometimes pernicious and your counsel implies evil."

"Oh, I am simply speaking for the firm," Caruthers replied. "As an individual Lyman can do as he pleases with his capital. Come in, sir."

Some one was tapping at the door, and Lyman, looking around, recognized the short and wheezing bulk of Uncle Buckley Lightfoot, the oracle. He almost tumbled out his chair to grasp the old fellow by the hand; and then, smoothing his conduct, he introduced him, with impressive ceremony.

"Yes, sir," said the old man, sitting down and looking about, "he got away from us a little the rise of a year ago, and I don't think Fox Grove has been the same since then; and it is a generally accepted fact that the children don't learn more than half as much. Me and Jimmie and Lige agreed on this point, and that settled it so far as the community was concerned. And Sammy, we hear that you have got to be a great lawyer. A man came through our county not long ago and boasted of knowing you, and a lawyer must amount to a good deal when folks go about boasting that they know him. And look here, my wife read a piece out of the paper about you—yes, sir, read it off just like she was a talkin'; and when she was done I 'lowed that maybe, after all, you hadn't done such an unwise thing to throw yourself headlong into the excitement of this town. And mother she said that no matter where a man went, he could still find the Lord if he looked about in the right way, and I didn't dispute her, but just kept on a sittin' there, a wallopin' my tobacco about in my mouth. Yes, sir; I am powerful tickled to see you."

Long before he had reached the end of his harangue, Warren had taken hold of his arm. "It was my paper your wife read it in," he said in tones as solemn as grace over meat. "I am the editor of the paper, and two dollars will get it every week for a year."

The old man shrugged himself out of the editor's imploring clasp, and looked at him. "Why," said he, "you don't appear to be more than old enough to have just come out of the tobacco patch, a picking off worms, along with the turkeys. But, in the excitement of the town, boys, I take it, are mighty smart. However, my son, I ain't got any particular use for a paper, except to have a piece read out of it once in awhile, but I'll tell you what I'll do. If you'll agree to print some pieces that Sammy will write for you, I'll take your paper. He was always a writin' and a tearin' it up when he boarded with me, and I was sorry to see him wastin' his labor in that way when he mout have been out in the woods shootin' squirrels; so if you'll agree——"

"I print his sketches every week, and some of them have been stolen by the big city papers," the editor cried, unable longer to restrain himself.

"Then I didn't know what I was missin'. Two dollars, you say? Well; here you are, sir, and now you just rip me off a paper every week. See if that's a two dollar bill."

"It's a five," Warren gasped.

"Glad it's that much; change it, please."

"I'll go out and get it changed."

"Don't put yourself to that much trouble. Give it to Sammy and I bet he'll change it in a jiffy, for it don't take a lawyer more than