d I. "That man at the Stock Yards meant
Trescott, not Prescott."

"I don't understand," said she sleepily.

"In a word," said I, "the girl who gave you the flowers is the Empress!"

"Albert Barslow!" said Alice. "Why--"

My wife was silent for a long time.

"I knew we'd meet her," she said at last. "It is fate."

CHAPTER VI.

I am Inducted into the Cave, and Enlist.

"Here's the cave," said Jim, at the door of his office, next morning.
"As prospective joint-proprietor and co-malefactor, I bid you welcome."

The smiles with which the employees resumed their work indicated that
the extraordinary character of this welcome was not lost upon them. The
office was on the ground-floor of one of the more pretentious buildings
of Lattimore's main street. The post-office was on one side of it, and
the First National Bank on the other. Over it were the offices of
lawyers and physicians. It was quite expensively fitted up; and the
plate-glass front glittered with gold-and-black sign-lettering. The
chairs and sofas were upholstered in black leather. On the walls hung
several decorative advertisements of fire-insurance companies, and maps
of the town, county, and state. Rolls of tracing-paper and blueprints
lay on the flat-topped tables, reminding one of the office of an
architect or civil engineer. A thin young man worked at books, standing
at a high desk; and a plump young woman busily clicked off typewritten
matter with an up-to-date machine.

"You'll find some books and papers on the table in the next room," said
Jim, as I finished my first look about. "I'll ask you to amuse yourself
with 'em for a little while, until I can dispose of my morning's mail;
after which we'll resume our hunt for resources. We haven't any morning
paper yet, and the evening _Herald_ is shipped in by freight and edited
with a saw. But it's the best we've got--yet."

He read his letters, ran his eyes over his newspapers and a magazine or
two, and dictated some correspondence, interrupted occasionally by
callers, some of whom he brought into the room where I was whiling away
the time, examining maps, and looking over out-of-date copies of the
local papers. One of these callers was Mr. Hinckley, the cashier of the
bank, who came to see about some insurance matters. He was spare,
aquiline, and white-mustached; and very courteously wished Lattimore the
good fortune of securing so valuable an acquisition as ourselves. It
would place Lattimo