stopped her.

"Stop now. I will settle with him."

His authoritative air quieted her, but she still stood glowering and muttering her wrath.

"You will have that money back here by to-morrow at this hour or I will put you in the penitentiary, where you have already been once and ought to be now. And now you will take my cigars out of your pocket, or I will hand you to that policeman out there at the door. Out with them."

"Boss, I ain't got no cigars o' yo's. I 'll swar to it on de wud o'——"

"Out with them—or—" Mr. Graeme turned to open the door. The negro, after a glance at Mam' Lyddy, slowly took several cigars from his pockets.

"Dese is all de cigars I has—and dey wuz given to me by a friend," he said, surlily.

"Yes, by my little boy. I know. Lay them there. I will keep them till to-morrow. And now go and get that money."

"What money?—I can't git dat money—dat money is invested."

"Then you bring the securities in which it is invested. I know where that money went. You go and rob some one else—but have that money at my office to-morrow before three o'clock or I 'll put you in jail to-morrow night. And if you ever put your foot on this place or speak to that old woman again, I 'll have you arrested. Do you understand!"

"Yes, sir."

"Now go." He opened the door.

"Officer, do you recognize this man!"

"Yes, sir, I know him."

"Well, I am going to let him go for the present"

The Rev. Amos was already slinking down the street. Mr. Graeme turned to the old woman.

"You want recognition?"

"Nor, suh, I don't" She gave a whimper. "I wants my money. I wants to git hold of dat black nigger what 's done rob me talkin' 'bout bein' sich a friend o' Caesar's."

"Do you want to go home?"

"Dis is my home." She spoke humbly, but firmly.

Two days afterward Mrs. Graeme said:

"Cabell, Mammy is converted. It is like old times."

"I think it will last," said her husband. "She is out four hundred and fifty-five dollars, and the Mount Salem flock is temporarily without a shepherd. The Rev. Amos Johnson was gathered in this morning for fleecing one of his sheep and signing the wrong name to a check."