e fun in the case, he wired to the agent of the
advertising company to cancel his previous letter of instructions, and
to secure him at least a week's grace before forfeiture of the
contract; then he proceeded quietly to telephone the stock-holders. He
found great difficulty in getting the use of his line, however, for
the stock-holders were already calling him up, frantically, tearfully,
broken-heartedly. They were all ruined through their connection with
the Sciatacata!

"I'll tell you, Fannie," said he at dinner, after pondering over a new
thought which would keep obtruding itself into his mind, "this thing
of training a straight business down to weight is no merry quip. It's
more trouble and risk than my favorite game of promoting for revenue
only."

"You keep right on at it, Jim," she insisted. "You'll find there is
ever so much more satisfaction in it in the end."

He was moody all through dinner. They had tickets for the theater that
night and they went, but here, too, Wallingford was distrait, and he
could not have remembered one incident of the play until during the
last act, when his brow suddenly cleared. When they went back to the
hotel he led his wife into the dining-room, and, excusing himself for
a moment, went to the telegraph desk and sent a telegram to Horace G.
Daw, of Boston.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH YOU ARE TOLD HOW TO LAUGH AT THAT
WOOZY FEELING

Two days later Wallingford called a conclave of the stock-holders to
meet one Hamilton G. Dorcas, of Boston, who had come to consider
taking over the property of the Doctor Quagg Peerless Sciatacata
Company. Quite hopefully Doctor Lazzier, young Corbin, young Paley and
the others attended that meeting for the disposal of the concern which
had already eaten up one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in
good cash; but when they began talking with Mr. Dorcas they were not
quite so extravagantly hopeful. Mr. H. G. Dorcas was a tall, thin,
black-haired, black-eyed and black-mustached young man in ministerial
clothing, who looked astonishingly like Horace G. Daw, if any one of
them had previously known that young gentleman.

"I have been through your factory," said Mr. Dorcas in a businesslike
manner, "and all I find here of any value to me is your second-hand
bottling machinery and vats and your second-hand office furniture. For
those I am prepared to pay you a reasonable second-hand price; say,
about fifteen thousand dollars."

It wa