ands of course--the colonel, whose eyes were getting
better by the day and Gorsuch whose face was now one round
continuous smile, got to work, and had a heart-to-heart--or rather a
pocket-to-pocket talk--which was quite different in those days from what
it would be now--after which both Kate and Harry threw to the winds
all thoughts of Rio and the country contiguous thereto, and determined
instead to settle down at Moorlands. And then a great big iron door sunk
in a brick vault was swung wide and certain leather-bound books were
brought out--and particularly a sum of money which Harry duly handed
over to Pawson the next time he drove to town--(twice a week now)--and
which, when recounted, balanced to a cent the total of the bills which
Pawson had paid three years before, with interest added, a list of
which the attorney still kept in his private drawer with certain other
valuable papers tied with red tape, marked "St. G. W. T." And still
later on--within a week--there had come the news of the final settlement
of the long-disputed lawsuit with St. George as principal residuary
legatee--and so our long-suffering hero was once more placed upon his
financial legs: the only way he could have been placed upon them or
would have been placed upon them--a fact very well known to every one
who had tried to help him, his philosophy being that one dollar borrowed
is two dollars owed--the difference being a man's self-respect.

And it is truly marvellous what this change in his fortunes
accomplished. His slack body rounded out; his sunken cheeks plumped
up until every crease and crack were gone, his color regained its
freshness, his eyes their brilliancy; his legs took on their old-time
spring and lightness--and a wonderful pair of stand-bys, or stand-ups,
or stand-arounds they were as legs go--that is legs of a man of
fifty-five.

And they were never idle, these legs: there was no sitting cross-legged
in a chair for St. George: he was not constructed along those lines.
Hardly a week had passed before he had them across Spitfire's mate; had
ridden to hounds; danced a minuet with Harry and Kate; walked half-way
to Kennedy Square and back--they thought he was going to walk all the
way and headed him off just in time; and best of all--(and this is
worthy of special mention)--had slipped them into the lower section of
a suit of clothes--and these his own, although he had not yet paid for
them--the colonel having liquidated their cost.