onally touching
the palm of the other, and, apparently without knowing in what
direction he was walking, he found himself opposite the shop of the
shoemaker who had been the indirect cause of his quarrel with his
sweetheart.

"Confound that fellow!" muttered Bartram, "he's in my way wherever I
move. I've heard too much of him in the stores and the courts and
everywhere else that I have been obliged to go. I have to hear of him
at the residence of my own sweetheart whenever I call there, and now I
find Eleanor herself, who has never been able to endure any of the
commoner specimens of humanity, apparently taking up the cudgels in his
defence. I wish I could understand the fascination that fellow exerts
over a number of people so much better than himself. Hang it! I am
going to find out. He is a fool, if ever there was one, and I am not.
If I can't get at the secret of it, it will be the first time that I
have ever been beaten in examining and cross-examining such a common
specimen of humanity."

Thus speaking, the lawyer crossed the street and entered the shop, but,
to his disgust, found both the cobbler's sons there with their father.
The boys, with a curiosity common to all very young people, and
particularly intense among the classes who have nothing in particular
to think of, stared at him so fixedly that he finally rose abruptly and
departed without saying a word. The boys went out soon after, and Billy
remarked to Tom, as the two sauntered homeward,--

"Tom, what do you s'pose is the reason that feller comes in to see dad
so much?"

"Gettin' a pair of shoes made, I s'pose," said Tom, sulkily, for he had
just failed in an attempt to extract a quarter of a dollar from his
father.

"The shoes that dad was makin' for him," said Billy, "was done two or
three weeks ago, 'cause I took 'em to his office myself. But he comes
to the shop over an' over again, 'cause I've seen him there, an'
whenever he comes he manages to get talkin' with dad about religion. He
always begins it, too, 'cause dad never says nothin' about it unless
the lawyer starts it first."

"Well," said Tom, "seems to me that if he wants to know anythin' on
that subject he could go to some of the preachers, that ought to know a
good deal more about it than dad does."

"Can't tell so much about that sort o' thing," said Billy. "There's
lots of men in this town that don't know much about some things that
knows a good deal about some others. You know