four who looked up as Mr. Smith entered,
somewhat sympathetically, and evidently aware of the perplexities of the
moment.

Henry Mullins and George Duff, the two bank managers, were both present.
Mullins is a rather short, rather round, smooth-shaven man of less than
forty, wearing one of those round banking suits of pepper and salt, with
a round banking hat of hard straw, and with the kind of gold tie-pin and
heavy watch-chain and seals necessary to inspire confidence in matters
of foreign exchange. Duff is just as round and just as short, and
equally smoothly shaven, while his seals and straw hat are calculated to
prove that the Commercial is just as sound a bank as the Exchange. From
the technical point of view of the banking business, neither of them had
any objection to being in Smith's Hotel or to taking a drink as long
as the other was present. This, of course, was one of the cardinal
principles of Mariposa banking.

Then there was Mr. Diston, the high school teacher, commonly known as
the "one who drank." None of the other teachers ever entered a hotel
unless accompanied by a lady or protected by a child. But as Mr.
Diston was known to drink beer on occasions and to go in and out of the
Mariposa House and Smith's Hotel, he was looked upon as a man whose life
was a mere wreck. Whenever the School Board raised the salaries of the
other teachers, fifty or sixty dollars per annum at one lift, it was
well understood that public morality wouldn't permit of an increase for
Mr. Diston.

Still more noticeable, perhaps, was the quiet, sallow looking man
dressed in black, with black gloves and with black silk hat heavily
craped and placed hollow-side-up on a chair. This was Mr. Golgotha
Gingham, the undertaker of Mariposa, and his dress was due to the fact
that he had just come from what he called an "interment." Mr. Gingham
had the true spirit of his profession, and such words as "funeral"
or "coffin" or "hearse" never passed his lips. He spoke always of
"interments," of "caskets," and "coaches," using terms that were
calculated rather to bring out the majesty and sublimity of death than
to parade its horrors.

To be present at the hotel was in accord with Mr. Gingham's general
conception of his business. No man had ever grasped the true principles
of undertaking more thoroughly than Mr. Gingham. I have often heard him
explain that to associate with the living, uninteresting though they
appear, is the only way to se