s friends may deceive him, but his eyes, backed by
his judgment, never do. Say, I'm getting up a great scheme, and pretty
soon I'm going to travel through the country with it. I'm going to
organize an investment company for country merchants. I've already got
about fifteen thousand dollars' worth of stock ready to issue. Has
everybody been to lunch? I have been so busy that I haven't eaten
anything since early this morning. Joe, lend me fifty cents."

"And take a mortgage on your investment company?"

"Oh, ho, ho, that's a good thing. The other day one of your so-called
literary men said that he would give me two dollars an hour to write
for him from dictation. 'Ha, I've struck a soft thing,' thinks I, and
I goes to his den with him. Well, when I had worked about half an
hour, taking down his guff, he turns to me and says, 'Say, lend me a
dollar.' 'I haven't got but forty cents,' I replied. But he didn't
weaken. 'Well, let me have that,' says he. 'You've got job and I
haven't, you know.' And he robbed me. I've got to go out now and see a
business jay from Peoria. With my newspaper work and my side
speculations I'm kept pretty busy. Joe, where's that fifty?"

"Gave it to you a moment ago."

"All right. Say, will you fellows be here when I come back?"

"Not if we can get out," Whittlesy replied.

"Oh, you've bobbed up again, have you? But remember that papa holds
you in the hollow of his hand."

CHAPTER XX.

CRIED A SENSATION.

In Chicago was a sheet--it could not be called a newspaper and
assuredly was not a publication--that was rarely seen until late at
night, and which always appeared to have been smuggled across the
border-line of darkness into the light of the street lamps. Ragged
boys, carrying this sheet, hung about the theaters and cried a
sensation when the play was done. Their aim was to catch strangers,
and to turn fiercely upon their importunity was not so effective as
simply to say, "I live here."

One night, as Henry and Ellen came out of a theater, they heard these
ragged boys shouting the names of Witherspoon and Brooks.

"Gracious," said Ellen, with sudden weight on Henry's arm, "what does
that mean?"

"It's nothing but a fake," he answered.

"But get a paper and see; won't you?"

"Yes, as soon as I can."

They were so crowd-pressed that it was some time before they could
reach one of the boys; and when they did, Ellen snatched a paper and
attempted to read it by the light of