en,
frankly an eavesdropper, and feeling, somehow, that I had earned the
right to hear.

"Why, o' course, I'll take yeh away, ef yeh don't like it here, little
gal," he was saying. "Yes, we'll go right in an' pack up now, if yeh say
so. Only it's a little suddent, and may hurt the Madame's feelin's, y'
know--"

* * * * *

At the hotel I was forced by the crowded state of the city to share the
bed of one of my fellow delegates. He was a judge from down the state,
and awoke as I lay down.

"That you, Barslow?" said he. "Do you know a fellow by the name of
Elkins, of Cleveland?"

"No," said I, "why?"

"He was here to see you, or rather to inquire if you were Al Barslow who
used to live in Pleasant Valley Township," the Judge went on. "He's the
fellow who organized the Ohio flambeau brigade. Seems smart."

"Pleasant Valley Township, did he say? Yes, I know him. It's Jimmie
Elkins."

And I sank to sleep and to dreams, in which Jimmie Elkins, the Empress,
Sir John, Alice, and myself acted in a spectacular drama, like that at
McVicker's. And yet there are those who say there is nothing in dreams!

CHAPTER III.

Reminiscentially Autobiographical.

This Jimmie Elkins was several years older than I; but that did not
prevent us, as boys, from being fast friends. At seventeen he had a
coterie of followers among the smaller fry of ten and twelve, his tastes
clinging long to the things of boyhood. He and I played together, after
the darkening of his lip suggested the razor, and when the youths of his
age were most of them acquiring top buggies, and thinking of the long
Sunday-night drives with their girls. Jim preferred the boys, and the
trade of the fisher and huntsman.

Why, in spite of parental opposition, I loved Jimmie, is not hard to
guess. He had an odd and freakish humor, and talked more of
Indian-fighting, filibustering in gold-bearing regions, and of moving
accidents by flood and field, than of crops, live-stock, or bowery
dances. He liked me just as did the older men who sent me to the
National Convention,--in spite of my youth. He was a ne'er-do-weel, said
my father, but I snared gophers and hunted and fished with him, and we
loved each other as brothers seldom do.

At last, I began teaching school, and working my way to a better
education than our local standard accepted as either useful or
necessary, and Jim and I drifted apart. He had always kept up a