Gilmore laughed.

"How would you like one of them?" he asked.

Montgomery gave him a swift glance of alarm.

"No, boss, I'm a respectable married man, and if I lugged one of them
ladies home with me, my old woman wouldn't do a thing but raise hell!
Boss, they're raw; yes, sir, that's it--they're raw!" Then fearing he
had gone too far in an adverse criticism, he added, "Friends of yours,
boss?"

"Not all of them!" said Gilmore, with lazy amusement.

"Catched unawares?" hinted Montgomery. But Gilmore changed the subject
abruptly.

"Well, what did you come here for?" he demanded.

"I got a lot of things on my mind, boss! I been a-worryin' all morning
and then I thinks of you. 'Mr. Gilmore's the man to go to,' I tells
myself, and I quit my job and come here."

He stuck his head into the grate again, but this time without apology.

"I suppose you are in trouble?" said Gilmore, and his genial mood seemed
to chill suddenly.

"You're right, boss, I'm in a heap of trouble!"

"Well, then, clear out of here!" said Gilmore.

"Hold on, boss, it ain't that kind of trouble" interposed the handy-man
hastily.

"What do you want?"

"Advice."

Gilmore leaned back in his easy-chair and crossed his legs.

"Go on!" he ordered briefly.

"A handy-man like me doin' all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people is
sure to see some curious things, ain't he, boss?"

"Well?"

"I'm here to tell you what I seen, boss; and every word of it will be
God A'mighty's truth!"

"It had better be!" rejoined Gilmore quietly, but with significant
emphasis.

"I don't want no better friend than you been to me," said Montgomery in
a sudden burst of grateful candor. "You've paid two fines for me, and
you done what you could for me that time I was sent up, when old man
Murphy said he found me in his hen-house."

Gilmore nodded.

"I was outrageous put upon! The judge appointed that fellow Moxlow to
defend me! Say, it was a hell of a defense he put up, and I had a friend
who was willin' to swear he'd seen me in the alley back of Mike
Lonigan's saloon cleaning spittoons when old man Murphy said I was in
his chicken house; Moxlow said he wouldn't touch my case except on its
merits, and the only merit it had was that friend, ready and willin' to
swear to anything!" Montgomery shrugged his great slanting shoulders.
"He's too damn perpendicular!"

"He is," agreed Gilmore. "But what's this got to do with what you saw?"

"Not a thing; but it m