ble--and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman
who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks
in the stores near by.

Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the
table. Albert admired the hands of the girl, which no amount of work
could quite rob of their essential shapeliness. She was not more than
twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so wistful was her face.

"They's one thing ag'in' yeh," Troutt, the liveryman, remarked to
Hartley: "we've jest been worked for one o' the goldingedest schemes you
_ever_ see! 'Bout six munce ago s'm' fellers come all through here
claimin' t' be after information about the county and the leadin'
citizens; wanted t' write a history, an' wanted all the pitchers of the
leading men, old settlers, an' so on. You paid ten dollars, an' you had
a book an' your pitcher in it."

"I know the scheme," grinned Hartley.

"Wal, sir, I s'pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I
don't s'pose they got out with a cent less'n one thousand dollars. An'
when the book come--wal!" Here he stopped to roar. "I don't s'pose you
ever see a madder lot o' men in your life. In the first place, they got
the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an' Judge
Ricker was ol' man Daggett. Didn't the judge swear--oh, it was awful!"

"I should say so."

"An the pitchers that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged _black_ you couldn't
tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom
is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the
hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a
blind bull."

"It wasn't a success, I take it, then. Why, I should 'a' thought they'd
'a' nabbed the fellows."

"Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn't deliver the books
theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f'r them. 'Course, Dick
wa'n't t' blame."

"No; I never tried it before," Albert was saying to Maud, at their end
of the table. "Hartley offered me a job, and as I needed money, I came.
I don't know what he's going to do with me, now I'm here."

Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it was too cold. He
had brought his books with him, planning to keep up with his class, if
possible, and was deep in "Caesar" when a timid knock came upon the door.

"Come!" he called, student fashion,

Maud entered, her face aglow.

"How natural that sounds!" she said.

A