where you fust see me standin'.
Afore I could ask you for any work, you wanted to know if I hadn't been
sent to mend your piazza railing. It was easy to say 'Yes,' and I
said it."

"And very well you carried out the joke, Amos," said old Van Quintem.
"You wouldn't make a bad actor."

"Rather better actor than carpenter, I guess," said Mr. Frump.

"Perhaps so," said old Van Quintem; "but a financier of your talent
needn't act, or mend railings, for a living. I should like to know, now,
how you made your money in California. Nine out of ten who go there,
come back poorer than they went."

"'Tisn't best to ask too many questions of a returned Californian,"
answered Amos, in perfect good humor.

"Nor of anybody else, about business matters. You are right," added old
Van Quintem.

"I say to wifey, and to all my friends, 'Let bygones be bygones. Take
me as you find me, and I'll take you as I find you; and we'll ax no
questions on either side.'"

"Dear Amos, you are the best of husbands!" said Mrs. Frump, looking
fondly in his face. Mr. Frump improved as he was looked at.

"Let bygones be bygones' is a very good rule," said old Van Quintem.

"Mr. Frump," said Matthew, unable longer to repress the compliment, "you
have a wonderful amount of good sense!"

"I told you," was the laughing reply, "that 'Amos was sensible in some
things.'"

BOOK THIRTEENTH

THE STRANGE LADY.

CHAPTER I.

A STORY OF THE PAST.

Another year slipped away, and wrought many changes among the
inhabitants of the block. Some of them had passed from stately mansions
to those narrow houses which are appointed for all the living. Others
had wedded, and moved to other blocks which were to be their future
homes--till the 1st of the following May. Some of them had grown rich by
quick speculations, and got into the choicest society by the simple
manoeuvre of taking a four-story brownstone front in the avenue which
formed the eastern boundary of the block. Others had attained to poverty
by the same process, and had migrated to cheaper lodgings in blocks
remote, expecting that a lucky turn of Fortune's wheel would bring them
back to fashionable life next year, as it most likely would. The
principal personages of this history had been radically affected by this
lapse of time--as will hereafter be shown--with the single exception of
Marcus Wilkeson.

For one year, life had passed tranquilly, uneventfully. He had sought,
and found, in his