o watch Jack as he succumbed to the influence of the
anesthetic. Once more she counted his heart throbs as the surgeon
scraped, burned and annihilated germs, bugs and septic tissue, and once
more her heart wildly stampeded in its ecstatic throbbing of love for
him whose life she literally held in her own hands, as his hallowed form
reposed unconscious on the glass slab.

Oh, what joy to her! what an entrancing, ravishing hour! As she
afterwards lived those minutes over and over again, allowing her stony
heart to grow tender as the impulse swayed her, she was carried back in
vivid memory to the camp on Rock Creek where she first learned of the
medicine tepee queen.

The second operation was successful, and although Jack's convalescence
was prolonged for months, he was fully cured of an ailment which in days
of less scientific skill had invariably resulted fatally.

With the culmination of her hospital education, Chiquita turned her
attention to the study of the economics of city life, and investigation
of the details relating to her future enterprise.

She found herself domiciled in a rather pretentious establishment in a
fashionable and aristocratic neighborhood.

"Yes, Senorita Chiquita, I shall be pleased to have you make your home
with my family, as they call themselves, and we are a happy houseful."
So spake the little black-eyed proprietor of the "Addington." She was
Mrs. Pickett. Pickett was a speculator. The whole atmosphere in and
about Pickett reflected the market; if he was on the right side of corn
or wheat or provisions one could feel it, hear it, see it in Pickett's
handshake, voice and clothes. If, however, he was "bull" on a "bear"
movement, the Pickett barometer dropped accordingly.

"Pshaw! that wheat is worth a dollar any day. Buy five thousand at 72."
But "puts" went to 68 cents at the close of the "privileges" and Pickett
was glum.

Pickett was not a big plunger, only one of the ten million poor, hungry
hangers on who watch the "ticker," listen to the reports made up for the
masses by the master hand of manipulators, out of storm centers, visible
supply, and world's consumption, and then gorge the bait.

Pickett was a winner one day on a pork deal and among other commodities
in the "pit" which seemed a "good thing" was corn at 31 cents. He bought
a small line and then forgot it in the strenuous circumstances which
followed. At the close of the day's pork business he pocketed a big roll
of bi