ng with
the rest of them a few weeks ago, and I'm already beginning to wish that
I hadn't."

"You are afraid of the market?"

"N-no; times are good, and the market--our market, at least--is daily
growing stronger. It is rather a matter of finances. I am an engineer,
as my father was before me. When it comes to wrestling with the money
devil, I'm outclassed from the start."

"There are a good many more of us in the same boat," said Griswold,
leaving an opening for further confidences if Raymer chose to make them.
But the young ironmaster was looking at his watch, and the confidences
were postponed.

"I'm keeping you up, when I daresay you ought to be in bed," he
protested; but Griswold held him long enough to ask for a suggestion in
a small matter of his own.

Now that he was able to be about, he was most anxious to relieve Miss
Grierson and her father of the charge and care of one whose obligation
to them was already more than mountain-high: did Raymer happen to know
of some quiet household where the obligated one could find lodging and a
simple table?

Raymer, taking time to think of it, did know. Mrs. Holcomb, the widow of
his father's bookkeeper, owned her own house in Shawnee Street. It was
not a boarding-house. The widow rented rooms to two of Mr. Grierson's
bank clerks, and she was looking for another desirable lodger. Quite
possibly she would be willing to board the extra lodger. Raymer,
himself, would go and see her about it.

"It is an exceedingly kind-hearted community this home town of yours,
Mr. Raymer," was the convalescent's leave-taking, when he shook hands
with the ironmaster at the foot of the stairs; and that was the thought
which he took to bed with him after Raymer had gone to make his adieux
to the small person who, in Griswold's reckoning, owned the kindest of
the kind hearts.

XXI

BROFFIN'S EQUATION

Having Clerk Maurice's telegram to time the overtaking approach, Broffin
found the _Belle Julie_ backing and filling for her berth at the
Vicksburg landing when, after a hasty Vicksburg breakfast, he had
himself driven to the river front.

Going aboard as soon as the swing stage was lowered, he found Maurice,
with whom he had something more than a speaking acquaintance, just
turning out of his bunk in the texas.

"I took it for granted you'd be along," was Maurice's greeting. "What
bank robber are we running away with now?"

Broffin grinned.

"I'm still after the one you