on trying to find you. He 'lows you are with some man who needs
slow killing. He telephoned to me, and he's notified a hundred sheriffs,
but, shucks! he's a mean scoundrel, and I'm glad to see yo'."

"I want to have you help me invest some money," she said. "It's mine,
and he signed every paper, for me. Here's one of them."

He took the sheet and read:

I want my wife to share up with me all my fortune, and I hereby
convey to her stocks, bonds, and cash, according to enclosed signed
certificates, etc.

Augustus Carline.

"How come hit?" the man asked.

"He was right friendly, then," she replied, grimly. "For what you-all
said about the daughter of my mother I come here to claim your help. You
know about money, about interest and dividends. I want it so I can have
money, regular, like Gus did----"

"I shall be glad to fix that," he said, wiping his glasses. "What you
wish is a diversified set of investments. How much is there?"

She stacked up before him wads, rolls, briquettes, and bundles. He
counted it, slip by slip and when he had completed the tally and
reckoned some figures on the back of an envelope, he nodded his
approval.

"I expect that this will bring you around twelve or fifteen hundred
dollars a year, safe, and a leetle besides, on speculation."

"That'll do," she said, approvingly.

No one in town connected her with the sensation up around Gage. She was
just one of those shanty-boat girls who come down the Mississippi every
once in a while, especially below St. Louis. In a hundred cities and
towns people were looking for Mrs. Augustus Carline, supposed to be
cutting a dashing figure, and probably in company with a certain Dick
Asunder, who had been seen in Chester, with his big black automobile on
the same day that Mrs. Carline abandoned her husband's automobile
there.

Of course, the shanty-boaters did not tell, if they knew; the River
tells no tales. Certainly, of all the women in the world this casual
visitor at Attorney Menard's need not attract attention. Menard always
did have strange clients, and it was nothing new to see a shanty-boat
land in and some man or woman walk up to his corner office and sit down
to tell him in legal confidences things more interesting to know than
any one not of his curiosity and sympathy would ever dream.

Attorney Menard kept faith with river wastrels, floating nomads who are
akin to gypsies, but