lary, and we'll see how we get on together."

"I should like that."

"Very well. Now, where are you boarding?"

"Nowhere. I get what I want to eat at the booths down along the levee."

"But where do you sleep?"

"Among the big lumber piles down there on Fourth street."

Captain Hallam looked at the young man for a moment with something like
admiration in his eyes. Presently he said:

"You'll do. You've got grit and you'll 'make the riffle,' sure. But you
must live more regularly, now that you are to have a salary. I know what
it means to live as you've been doing. I used to do it myself. I could
tell to a cent the nutritive value of a pegged pie or a sewed one, and
at a single glance I could guess the probable proportions of the dog and
cat in a sausage. That sort of thing's all right for a little while, but
not for long, and as for the sleeping among lumber piles, it's risky. I
used to sleep in an empty sugar hogshead by preference, but sleeping out
of doors may give you rheumatism."

"I've been doing it for four years," answered Duncan, smiling, "and I
still have the use of my limbs."

"Yes, of course. I didn't think of that. But you must live better now.
There's a well-furnished room above the office. It was my brother's
quarters before he got married, and it is very comfortable. You can take
it for your own. Give Dutch John, the scrub boy, half a dollar a week to
take care of it for you and that's all the rent you need pay. As for
your meals, most young men in Cairo feed their faces at the hotel. But
that's expensive and what the proprietor calls his 'kuzene' is
distinctly bad. There's a lady, however,--Mrs. Deming,--who furnishes
very good 'square meals,' I hear, over in Walnut street. You'd better
try there, I think. She's what you would call a gentlewoman, but she
needs all the money you'll pay her."

Duncan wondered a little what a 'square meal' might be, but he was
getting somewhat used to the prevalence in the West of those figurative
forms of expression which we call slang. So he took it for granted that
"square meals" were for some reason preferable to meals of any other
geometrical form, and answered simply that he would look up Mrs.
Deming's house after business hours should be over.

"Remember," said Captain Hallam as he passed out of the office, "you are
to see me at my house to-night. Better come to supper--say at seven--and
after supper we'll talk over that law point you mentioned, and othe