to lunch.

"No, thank you," replied the captain. "I just run down to ask if there
was anything new in the offin'. Last time I see you, you hinted you and
your mates had sighted somethin' or other through the fog, and it might
turn out to be a rock or a lighthouse, you couldn't tell which. Made up
your mind yet?"

Sylvester shook his head. "No," he said, slowly; "it is still foggy.
We're busy investigating, but we're not ready to report."

"Humph! Well, what's the thing look like? You must be a little nigher to
it by now."

The lawyer tapped his desk with a pencil. "I don't know what it looks
like," he answered. "That is to say, I don't--I can't believe it is what
it appears, at this distance, to be. If it is, it is the most--"

He paused. Captain Elisha waited for him to go on and, when he did not
do so, asked another question.

"The most what?" he demanded. "Is it likely to be very bad?"

"Why--why--well, I can't say even that yet. But there! as I told you,
I'm not going to permit it to worry me. And you mustn't worry, either.
That's why I don't give you any further particulars. There may be
nothing in it, after all."

His visitor smiled. "Say, Mr. Sylvester," he said, "you're like the
young-ones used to be when I was a boy. There'd be a gang of 'em waitin'
by the schoolhouse steps and when the particular victim hove in sight
they'd hail him with, 'Ah, ha! _you're_ goin' to get it!' 'Wait till
teacher sees you!' and so on. Course the victim would want to know what
it meant. All the satisfaction he got from them was, 'That's all right!
You'll find out! You just wait!' And the poor feller put in the time
afore the bell rung goin' over all the things he shouldn't have done and
had, and wonderin' which it was this time. You hinted to me a week ago
that there was a surprisin' possibility loomin' up in 'Bije's financial
affairs. And ever since then I've been puzzlin' my brains tryin' to
guess what could happen. Ain't discovered any more of those Cut Short
bonds, have you?"

The bonds to which he referred were those of a defunct Short Line
railroad. A large number of these bonds had been discovered among A.
Rodgers Warren's effects; part of his "tangled assets," the captain had
termed them, differentiating from the "tangible" variety.

"Abbie, my housekeeper, has been writin' me," he went on, "about havin'
the sewin' room papered. She wants my advice concernin' the style of
paper; says it ought to be pretty and o