laugh went round. Poor old Tim Peaslee stealing Sam Collins's or anybody else's opal to straighten out a deficiency in his account was about as absurd a deduction to those who remembered him, as Diogenes losing his lantern in the effort to scrape acquaintance with a thief.

Marny, his face blue-white with his tramp through the snow, and Jack Stirling, in a new English Macintosh, now entered, shook their wet garments, filled their pipes from the yellow jar, and dragged up chairs to join the half-circle, the puffs of their newly filled pipes adding innumerable wavy lines to the etched plate of the atmosphere.

"Mac has got the most extraordinary story, Marny, that you ever heard," cried Wharton. "What do you think of old Tim Peaslee helping himself to Sam Collins's jewelry?"

"Never heard of Peaslee or Collins in my life," answered Marny, dragging his chair closer and opening his chilled fingers to the blaze. "Jack may, he knows everybody—some he oughtn't to. Who are they, burglars or stockbrokers?"

"Why, Collins, who has that opal mine in Mexico. Old Tim was for years the book-keeper of the Exeter Bank. You must have known Peaslee," persisted Wharton.

Marny shook his head, and Wharton turned to Mac.

"Begin all over again, old man, and we'll take a vote. Marny's head is as thick as one of his backgrounds."

"At the beginning?" asked MacWhirter, between the puffs of his pipe, freshly lighted now that his story had been told.

"Yes, from the time Sam Collins came to New York—everything."

Mac laid his pipe once more on the mantel, threw an extra stick on the fire from the pile by the chimney, raked the ashes clear of the front log, and resumed his position on the rug. Now that the circle was larger and he had been challenged to give every detail he intended to make his second telling of the extraordinary story more interesting, if possible, than the first.

"I'll give it to you exactly as Collins gave it to me; and, Boggs, you will please keep still until I get through. Wharton, change your seat so you can clap your hand over Boggs's mouth when he breaks out. Thanks.

"About two years ago Sam Collins came back to New York, first time in nearly twenty years. He had been up in Peru living in the clouds, digging for copper and not finding any, he told me; then he kept on to Ceylon, wandered around there for a while, and finally landed at Vera Cruz and went up into Mexico, until he struck the town of Queretaro. You've been there, Wharton; I remember your sketch of the old Cathedral."

Wharton nodded, and settled himself deeper in his chair.

"Shot Maximilian there," whispered Boggs under his breath.

Mac glanced savagely at Boggs, but continued:

"On taking in the town Collins found that everybody, from the beggars in the Plaza to the bankers in the palaces, had their pockets full of opals, wads and wads of them, some big as duck-shot, some big as birds' eggs. Collins is an expert on anything that comes out of the ground, and the next morning he was astride of a burro and off to the mines, noting how the minerals lay and the dip of the land, and the next week he was away prospecting, and before the month was out he had bought a hill that was as bare as your hand of everything but bunch grass and sand fleas, and had ten half-breeds at work, and by the end of the year he had struck hard-pan, with enough opals lying around loose to make him rich. This was two years ago, remember. Pretty soon Sam discovered that he needed more money to develop his mine, and he started for New York to look up his old friends to help him raise it.

"When Collins arrived he found that a lot of things could happen in twenty years: half of his friends were dead; some were scattered over the world, wandering as he had been; and out of fifty or more old chums who had known him at college only a dozen or more were left. Tim Peaslee was one of them.

"Sam loved Tim; he always had. For years they had kept up their letters; then Tim lost track of Collins, and communication ceased. All the way to New York Collins was thinking of Tim. If he was rich, they'd go in together on the mine; and if he was poor, he'd share what he had with him. The Tim he loved was not the kind of man to shake hands with. His Tim was the sort of a fellow to hug and keep your hand on his knee while you talked to him.

"Sam found him in an old house in Bond Street—one of those high-stooped, passed-by wrecks that are being turned into Italian tenements, with wood and coal shops in the basement and sign painters in the garret. He was living with his old sister, Miss Peaslee—older than Tim. The two had a life interest in the property, and none of the heirs could take possession until these two were buried.

"It was dark when he reached Tim's and mounted the steps; too dark for him to notice the queer iron railings and newel posts red with rust, and the front door that hadn't had a coat of paint on it for years, nor the knob and knocker that were black with the weather. At his first ring no one answered; at the third, a woman with a basket opened the door. She was on her way out—that's why she opened it.

"'Yes, Mr. Peaslee and his folks lives on the top floor. He's our landlord. Walk right up. This door ain't locked till twelve o'clock, so ye can just shut it to behind ye. We have the first floor, and another family has the second, but they're moved out.'

"On the way upstairs, in the dim light of the single gas-jet, Sam made out the slender banisters and on each landing the solid mahogany doors that opened into the several rooms, showing him that it had once been a house of some pretensions.

"He knocked gently; there was a hurried scuffle inside, as if someone wanted to escape being seen, and Tim thrust out his head. He had on an old calico dressing-gown and was in his slippers, his glasses pushed back on his forehead.

"Sam told me he never had such a shock in his life as when he saw Tim. He had to look into his face twice and wait until he spoke before he was sure it was he. He had left his chum a springy, enthusiastic young fellow of twenty-five, full of go and life, and he found him a dried-up, wizen-faced, bald-pated old fellow near fifty, who looked a hundred. While he had been climbing mountains, sleeping in the open air, working with a pick or rounding up cattle, poor old Tim had been driving a quill behind a desk, getting drier and drier, like an old gourd hung in an attic—all the hope shrunk out of him, all his joyousness gone.

"Who wants me?'

"'Don't you know me, Tim? I'm Collins—Sam Collins,' and he caught hold of his limp hand.

"'Collins?' muttered Tim, drawing back. 'I don't know but one—' here the light in the hall fell on Sam's face—'Not Sam, are you?' He knew him now. 'Come inside!' and he dragged him past the door, his shrivelled hand on the miner's collar. 'Ann, here's Sam—old Sam Collins! Where have you been, you old rascal, all these years? My sister—you remember her, of course—we've been living here—Oh, Sam, but I'm glad to see you! What a great girth you've got on you, and so big in the shoulders! And what a queer hat! How did you find me?—Oh, you rascal!'

"This running fire of exclamations and questions was kept up until Sam had found a seat next the old sister, who was thinner even than Tim, and with a look in her eyes of a hungry child peering into a cake-shop. All this time Tim was holding on to Sam's big shoulders as if he was afraid he would escape.

"When Sam's gaze was free to wander about the room he found it choked full of old furniture of the oldest and most dilapidated kind—a mahogany sideboard with the knobs gone; sofas with the hair-cloth seats in holes, all good in their day, but all wanting the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker. Not a dollar had been spent upon them for years. The life interest, Sam found out afterward, went with the furniture as well as the house.

"One thing struck Sam more than anything else, and that was Tim's tenderness over Miss Ann.