s shoulders, "there's no fog between you and me."

Warren looked up with a smile. He was a young fellow with a bright
face, and the soft curly hair of a child. "Fog? No, sunshine. There
couldn't be any fog where you are, Lyman. I'm not much of a scholar.
I've had to squirm so much that I haven't had time to study, but I
know a man when I see him, and I don't see how any woman could give
you much attention without falling in love with you, hanged if I do."

Lyman blushed and shook him playfully. "I am delighted to pool
distresses with you," he said, "but don't try to flatter me. Women
laugh at me," he added, sitting down.

"No, they laugh with you. But that's all right. Now, let's talk over
our prospects."

CHAPTER V.

THE BELLE OF THE TOWN.

Once in a long while Banker McElwin made it a policy to gather up a
number of his boastful relations, reinforced by a number of friends,
and then conduct the party to the house of another kinsman, where he
would give them an evening of delight. He did not give notice of these
gracious recognitions, preferring to make the event sweeter with
surprise. On his part it was a generous forgetfulness of
self-importance--it was as if a placid and beneficent moon had come to
beam upon a cluster of stars. To the men he would quote stocks, as if,
a lover of letters, he were giving a poem to a "mite society." Upon
the ladies he would smile and throw off vague hints of future silks
and fineries.

One evening this coterie gathered at the home of Jasper Staggs. Old
Jasper, in his earlier days, had been a town marshal, and it was his
boast that he had arrested Steve Day, the desperado who had choked
the sheriff and defied the law. This great feat was remembered by the
public, and old Jasper nursed it as a social pension. But it did not
bring in revenue sufficient to sustain life, so he made a pretense of
collecting difficult accounts while his wife and "old maid" daughter
did needlework and attended to the few wants of one boarder, Sam
Lyman. The "banker's society" recognized the Staggs family in the
evening of the day which followed Sam Lyman's call at the First
National, and was in excitable progress while Lyman, in ignorance of
it all, prolonged his talk with Warren. In the family sitting room the
banker talked of the possibility of a panic in Wall Street. In the
parlor the younger relatives were playing games, with Annie Staggs,
the old maid, as director of ceremonies. After a t