were in Lattimore two officers of New England banks with whom we
had placed a rather heavy line of G. B. T. securities, and who had made
the trip for the purpose of looking us up. Suppose that they found out
that the notes and mortgages of William S. Trescott & Co. really had
back of them only some very desirable suburban additions, and the
personal responsibility of a retired farmer, who was daily handing his
money to board-of-trade gamblers, with whom he was getting an education
in the great strides we are making in the matter of mixed drinks? This
thought occurred to all of us at once.

"Well," said Cornish, stating the point of agreement after the Captain's
trouble had been fully discussed, "unfortunately 'the right to be a
cussed fool is safe from all devices human,' and there doesn't seem to
be any remedy."

It all came, thought I, as Jim and I sat silent after Cornish and the
Captain went out, from the fact that Bill's present condition in life
gave those tendencies to which he had always been prone to yield, a
chance for unrestricted growth. He ought to have staid with his steers.
Cattle and corn were the only things in which he could take an interest
sufficiently keen to keep him from drink. These habits of his were
enacting the old story of the lop-eared rabbits in
Australia--overrunning the country. Bill had been as sober a citizen as
one could desire, as long as his house-building occupied his time; and
he and Josie had worked together as companionably as they used to do in
the hay and wheat. But now he was drifting away from her. Her father
should have staid on the farm.

"Do you know," said I, "that Giddings is making about as great a fool of
himself as Bill?"

"Yes," said Jim, "but that's because he's in a terrible state of mind
about his marriage. If we can keep him from delirium tremens until after
the wedding, he'll be all right. Some Italian brain-sharp has written up
cases like his, and he'll be all right. But with Bill it's different....
Do you remember our old Shep?"

"No," I returned wonderingly, almost impatiently. "What about him?"

"Well," he mused, "I've been picking up knowledge of men for a while
along back; and I've come to prize more highly the personal history of
dogs; and Shep was worth a biography for its own sake, to say nothing of
the value of a typical case. He was a woolly collie, who would
cheerfully have given up his life for the cows and sheep. Anything in
his line, that