you got no idea how that girl takes on."

"She shouldn't worry," Philip cried. "I promised I would fix her up, and I will fix her up."

Daily the same scene was enacted at the Goldblatt residence on One Hundred and Eighteenth Street, and daily Birdie refused to forsake her sister, until six weeks had elapsed.

"But, Birdie," Philip announced for the hundredth time, "so sure as you stand there I couldn't keep this up no longer. I will either go crazy or either I will jump in the river."

Birdie patted him on the back.

"Don't think about it," she said. "Take your mind off it. To-day your property gets sold and Popper says he will be down at the salesroom at twelve o'clock."

"Let 'em sell it," Philip cried; "I don't care."

He turned away after a hurried embrace, and was proceeding down Lenox Avenue toward the subway when Marks Henochstein, the real-estate broker, encountered him. Marks clutched him by the shoulder.

"Well, Philip," Henochstein cried, "you are in luck at last."

"In luck!" Philip exclaimed bitterly. "A dawg shouldn't have the luck what I got it."

"Well, if you don't call it lucky," Henochstein continued, "what would you call it lucky?"

"Excuse me, Henochstein," said Philip; "I ain't good at guessing puzzles. What am I lucky for?"

"Why, ain't you heard it yet?"

"I ain't heard nothing," Philip replied. "Do me the favour and don't keep me on suspension."

"Why, the city is going to widen Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street in front of them houses of yours, and you will get damages. Oi! what damages you will get!"

Philip stared blankly at his informant for one hesitating moment; then he dashed off for the nearest subway station.

Half an hour later he sat in the office of Henry D. Feldman and gasped out his story.

"In three quarters of an hour, Mr. Feldman," he cried, "that property will be sold, and, if it is, the feller what buys it will get damages for the street opening and I will get nix."

"This is a fine time to tell me about it, Margolius," Feldman said. "You came in here six weeks ago and asked me to help you out, and I haven't seen you since. The time to do something was six weeks ago. Why didn't you come back to see me before the suit was started?"

"Because I was busy, Mr. Feldman," Margolius replied. "A whole lot of things happened to me about that time. In the first place, the next day after I saw you I got married."

"What!" Feldman exclaimed, "you got married? Well, Margolius, you recovered pretty quickly from that affair with Birdie Goldblatt."

Margolius stared gloomily at his attorney.

"What d'ye mean I recover from it?" he echoed. "I didn't recover from it, Mr. Feldman. That's who I married—Miss Birdie Goldblatt."

Feldman sat back in his chair.

"Well, of all the unfatherly brutes," he said, "to shut down on his own daughter's husband!"

"Hold on there, Mr. Feldman," Philip interrupted; "he don't know he's shutting down on his daughter's husband, because we was secretly married, y' understand? And even to-day yet the old man don't know nothing about it."

"What do you mean?" Feldman asked. "Why wouldn't he know his own daughter was married?"

"Because she's living home yet," Philip replied, and "I can't persuade her to go housekeeping, neither."

Feldman frowned for a moment and then he struck the desk with his fist.

"By jiminy!" he shouted, "you've got the old man by the whiskers!"

It was now Philip's turn to ask what Feldman meant.

"Why," the latter explained, "your wife's inchoate right of dower is still outstanding."

"That's where you make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Philip corrected. "My Birdie is a neat dresser and never so much as a pin out of place."

"You don't understand," Feldman continued. "As soon as Birdie and you got married she took an interest in your property."

"Sure she took an interest in my property," Philip assented. "Why, if it wouldn't be for her I wouldn't know nothing about this here sale to-day."

"But I mean that as soon as she married you she became vested with the right to receive the rents of a third of that property during her lifetime as soon as you died," said Feldman.

"Well, we won't worry about that," Philip said with a deprecatory wave of his hand, "because, in the first place, that property is pretty near vacant and don't bring in enough rents to pay the taxes, and, in the second place, I'm still good and healthy and I wouldn't die for a long time yet."

"Oh, what's the use!" Feldman cried. "What I mean is that they can't foreclose those second mortgages unless they make Birdie a party to the suit and serve her with the summons; so, all you have to do to stop the sale is to go down to the salesroom and, when the auctioneer starts to ask for bids, get up and tell 'em all about it. Why, they'll have to begin their suit all over again."

"But," Philip protested, "if I tell 'em all about it the old man will throw Birdie out of the house."

"Hold on!" Feldman broke in. "You mustn't tell them you're married to Birdie. Just tell them you're married, and let them find out your wife's name for themselves. Although, to be sure, that won't take long, for the record of marriage licenses at the city hall will show it."

"License nothing!" Philip cried. "We didn't get no license at the city hall. We got married by a justice of the peace in Jersey City."

"Fine!" Feldman exclaimed, his professional ethics thrown to the winds. "That'll keep 'em guessing as long as you want."

"All I want is a month, and by that time I can raise the money and fix the whole thing up," Margolius replied.

Feldman looked at his watch.

"Chase yourself," he said; "it's a quarter of twelve, and the foreclosure sale begins at noon."

VI

On the rostrum of an auctioneer in the Vesey Street salesroom stood Eleazer Levy in weighty conversation with Miles M. Scully, the referee in foreclosure. Scully's brow was furrowed into a thousand earned wrinkles, and the little knot of real-estate brokers who regularly attend foreclosure sales gazed reverently on the two advocates.

"And here was this guy," Levy concluded, "with nothing but a pair of sixes all the time."

"But in a table-stakes game," Scully murmured, "you make a sight more if you don't butt into every pot. If you think you're topped lay 'em down. That's what I do, and it pays."

They were waiting for the auctioneer to appear, and Goldblatt hung around the edge of the crowd and gazed anxiously at them. He had heard that morning of the proposed street widening and wanted the sale to go through without a hitch. At length the auctioneer arrived and the clerk read off the notice of sale in a monotonous gabble just as Philip elbowed his way through the crowd.

"Now, then, gentlemen," the auctioneer announced pompously, "the four parcels will be sold separately. Each is subject to a first mortgage of twenty thousand dollars and is otherwise free and clear except the taxes. The amount of taxes is——"

"Hey, there!" Philip cried at this juncture. "I got something to say, too."

The auctioneer paused and fixed Philip with what was intended to be a withering look.

"Put that man out!" the auctioneer called to one of the attendants.

"You could put me out," Philip