eal was closed there and
then."

DeRue Hannington stopped, as if the memory of it was somewhat
painful.

"Not exactly closed, Phil! because it sort of opened up again, two
days ago, just three weeks after I was done by Douthem, and he had
cashed my cheque and jolly-well beat it, as they say out here.

"It was like this. I was sitting on the veranda, enjoying a smoke and
admiring my property and the view, when a collector Johnnie came up
the road and asked me where Douthem was. I told him Douthem was gone,
and I was now the proprietor.

"'Didn't know they had changed tenants,' said he. 'I've called for the
rent.'

"Do you know, Phil, I fawncied the silly owl had gone balmy, but he
insisted that he had to collect thirty dollars a month rent.

"Of course, I showed the fellow my receipt for the place, proving I
was the owner of it. But he just looked at it and said:--

"'Say!--who are you making a kid of? This might be all right for a
bunch of groceries, or electric light, or a ton of coal, but it isn't
all right for a rawnch.'

"'Why!--what's the matter with it?' I asked. 'Doesn't it say, Received
from Percival DeRue Hannington the sum of five thousand dollars for
one ranch of twenty acres, with house and barns, situated ten miles
from the city of Vernock and called Douthem's Ranch?'

"'Sure it does,' said the chap. And he was devilish rude about it
too."

By this time, Phil had all he could do to keep from shouting with
merriment. He did not dare to look at DeRue Hannington, so he kept
religiously to his food.

"Well,--he told me the rawnch belonged to some other people; that
Douthem only rented it, and that one had to have a deed and register
it when one bought property. The blooming upshot was I had to pay the
collecting fellow his thirty dollars and get out. So I landed back
here to-day.

"I daresay, Phil, a man has to pay for his experience, but you know it
looks as if a fellow had to do so much paying that when he does finish
up by really owning something, he will have paid such a beastly lot
for it that he'll never be able to make it up again."

Phil showed impatience.

"Good heavens, man!--don't you know that land is not exchanged without
an Agreement for Sale, or a Deed?"

"How should I know?" answered the innocent. "I never bought land
before. If I pay the price for an article, it should be mine,
shouldn't it?"

"If the man you pay is honest," replied Phil, "but he isn't always
honest, hen