o put up some San Felipe as
collateral, let her go, but I shan't touch a share of it. Pens and ink,
please, Oscar,"--he lifted a large forefinger to the Austrian.

The Captain took out his checkbook and a book of blank notes, and
adjusted his nose-nippers. He wrote a few words in one book and Archie
wrote a few in the other. Then they each tore across perforations and
exchanged slips of paper.

"That's the way. Saves office rent," the Captain commented with
satisfaction, returning the books to his pocket. "And now, Archie, where
are you off to?"

"Got to go East to-night. A deal waiting for me in New York." Dr. Archie
rose.

The Captain's face brightened as he saw Oscar approaching with a tray,
and he began tucking the corner of his napkin inside his collar, over
his ascot. "Don't let them unload anything on you back there, doctor,"
he said genially, "and don't let them relieve you of anything, either.
Don't let them get any Cripple stuff off you. We can manage our own
silver out here, and we're going to take it out by the ton, sir!"

The doctor left the dining-room, and after another consultation with the
clerk, he wrote his first telegram to Thea:--

Miss Thea Kronborg,
Everett House, New York.

Will call at your hotel eleven o'clock Friday morning. Glad to come.
Thank you.

ARCHIE

He stood and heard the message actually clicked off on the wire, with
the feeling that she was hearing the click at the other end. Then he sat
down in the lobby and wrote a note to his wife and one to the other
doctor in Moonstone. When he at last issued out into the storm, it was
with a feeling of elation rather than of anxiety. Whatever was wrong, he
could make it right. Her letter had practically said so.

He tramped about the snowy streets, from the bank to the Union Station,
where he shoved his money under the grating of the ticket window as if
he could not get rid of it fast enough. He had never been in New York,
never been farther east than Buffalo. "That's rather a shame," he
reflected boyishly as he put the long tickets in his pocket, "for a man
nearly forty years old." However, he thought as he walked up toward the
club, he was on the whole glad that his first trip had a human interest,
that he was going for something, and because he was wanted. He loved
holidays. He felt as if he were going to Germany himself. "Queer,"--he
went over it with the snow blowing in his face,--"but that sort of thing
is more interest