slacking to a stop.

My friend looked quickly out of the window.

His face was agitated.

"Great heavens!" he said, "that's the junction. I've missed my stop. I
should have got out at the last station. Say, porter," he called out
into the alleyway, "how long do we stop here?"

"Just two minutes, sah," called a voice back. "She's late now, she's
makin' up tahm!"

My friend had hopped up now and had pulled out a bunch of keys and was
fumbling at the lock of the suit case.

"I'll have to wire back or something," he gasped. "Confound this
lock--my money's in the suit case."

My one fear now was that he would fail to get off.

"Here," I said, pulling some money out of my pocket, "don't bother with
the lock. Here's money."

"Thanks," he said grabbing the roll of money out of my hand,--in his
excitement he took all that I had.--"I'll just have time."

He sprang from the train. I saw him through the window, moving toward
the waiting-room. He didn't seem going very fast.

I waited.

The porters were calling, "All abawd! All abawd." There was the clang of
a bell, a hiss of steam, and in a second the train was off.

"Idiot," I thought, "he's missed it;" and there was his fifty-dollar
suit case lying on the seat.

I waited, looking out of the window and wondering who the man was,
anyway.

Then presently I heard the porter's voice again. He evidently was
guiding someone through the car.

"Ah looked all through the kyar for it, sah," he was saying.

"I left it in the seat in the car there behind my wife," said the angry
voice of a stranger, a well-dressed man who put his head into the door
of the compartment.

Then his face, too, beamed all at once with recognition. But it was not
for me. It was for the fifty-dollar valise.

"Ah, there it is," he cried, seizing it and carrying it off.

I sank back in dismay. The "old gang!" Pete's marriage! My grandmother's
death! Great heavens! And my money! I saw it all; the other man was
"making talk," too, and making it with a purpose.

Stung!

And next time that I fall into talk with a casual stranger in a car, I
shall not try to be quite so extraordinarily clever.

_V.--Under the Barber's Knife_

"WAS you to the Arena the other night?" said the barber, leaning over me
and speaking in his confidential whisper.

"Yes," I said, "I was there."

He saw from this that I could still speak. So he laid another thick wet
towel over my face before he spoke again.