he young lady's expression he had said quite enough already.

"Idiot!" she exclaimed, after he had left the room. "I ask him a
sensible question and he thinks it necessary to answer with a silly
compliment. Thought I was fishing for one, probably. Why will men be
such fools--some men?"

Mr. Daniels' opinion concerning his professional rival was asked a good
many times during that first fortnight. He treated the subject as he
did the rival, with condescending toleration. It was quite plain that
he considered his own position too secure to be shaken. In fact, his
feeling toward John Kendrick seemed to be a sort of kindly pity.

"He appears to be a very well-meaning young man," he said, in reply to
one of the questions. "Rash, of course; very young men are likely to be
rash--and perhaps more hopeful than some of us older and--ahem--wiser
persons might be under the same circumstances. But he is well-meaning
and persevering. I have no doubt he will manage to pick up a few crumbs,
here and there. I may be able to throw a few in his way. There are
always cases--ah--which I can't--or don't wish to--accept."

When this remark was repeated to Captain Obed the latter sniffed.

"Humph!" he observed, "I don't know what they are. I never see a case
Heman wouldn't accept, if there was as much as seventy-five cents in
it. If bananas was a nickel a bunch the only part he'd throw in anybody
else's way would be the skins."

John, himself, did not seem to mind or care what Mr. Daniels or anyone
else said. He wrote a letter to New York and, in the course of time,
a second-hand desk, a few chairs, and half a dozen cases of law books
arrived by freight and were installed in the ex-barber-shop. The local
sign-painter perpetrated a sign with "John Kendrick, Attorney-at-law"
upon it in gilt letters, and the "looking out of the window" really
began.

And that was about all that did begin for days and days. Each morning or
afternoon, Sundays excepted, Captain Bangs would drop in at the office
and find no one there, no one but the tenant, that is. The latter,
seated behind the desk, with a big sheepskin-bound volume spread open
upon it, was always glad to see his visitor. Their conversations were
characteristic.

"Hello, John!" the captain would begin. "How are the clients comin'?"

"Don't know, Captain. None of them has as yet got near enough so that I
could see how he comes."

"Humph! I want to know. Mr. John D. Jacob Vanderbilt ain't