solid, you know, without
intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient
policy, petrified custom, loyalty to--to--hang it, I can't find the
right words, but YOU know what I mean, Aleck, and that there isn't any
harm in it. I'll try again. You see, it's this way. If a person--"

"You have said quite enough," said Aleck, coldly; "let the subject be
dropped."

"I'M willing," fervently responded Sally, wiping the sweat from his
forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. Then,
musingly, he apologized to himself. "I certainly held threes--I KNOW
it--but I drew and didn't fill. That's where I'm so often weak in
the game. If I had stood pat--but I didn't. I never do. I don't know
enough."

Confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. Aleck
forgave him with her eyes.

The grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front
again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a
stretch. The couple took up the puzzle of the absence of Tilbury's
death-notice. They discussed it every which way, more or less hopefully,
but they had to finish where they began, and concede that the only
really sane explanation of the absence of the notice must be--and
without doubt was--that Tilbury was not dead. There was something sad
about it, something even a little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and
had to be put up with. They were agreed as to that. To Sally it seemed
a strangely inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he
thought; one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind,
in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping to draw
Aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; she had not
the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, worldly or other.

The pair must wait for next week's paper--Tilbury had evidently
postponed. That was their thought and their decision. So they put the
subject away and went about their affairs again with as good heart as
they could.

Now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging Tilbury all the
time. Tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; he was dead, he had
died to schedule. He was dead more than four days now and used to it;
entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the
cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week's SAGAMORE, too,
and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen
to a metropolitan