day, Ham."

"What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting, now
a little bewildered.

"Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a
sandwich and a piece of apple pie. Will you come along?"

They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile
brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he
decided that any subject would do.

"That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart--smart as paint," he remarked.
"Do you know him?"

"I've seen him," said Austen. "He's a young man, isn't he?"

"And natty. He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to
work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle. You ought to
hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics. I was passing
there the other day, and he was walking around among the flowerbeds.
'Ain't your name Tooting?' he hollered. I almost fell out of the buggy."

"What did he want?" asked Austen, curiously. Mr. Tooting winked.

"Say, those millionaires are queer, and no mistake. You'd think a fellow
that only had to cut coupons wouldn't be lookin' for another job,
wouldn't you? He made me hitch my horse, and had me into his study, as he
called it, and gave me a big glass of whiskey and soda. A fellow with
buttons and a striped vest brought it on tiptoe. Then this Crewe gave me
a long yellow cigar with a band on it and told me what the State needed,
--macadam roads, farmers' institutes, forests, and God knows what. I told
him all he had to do was to get permission from old man Flint, and he
could have 'em."

"What did he say to that?"

"He said Flint was an intimate friend of his. Then he asked me a whole
raft of questions about fellows in the neighbourhood I didn't know he'd
ever heard of. Say, he wants to go from Leith to the Legislature."

"He can go for all I care," said Austen, as he pushed open the door of
the restaurant.

For a few days Mr. Meader hung between life and death. But he came of a
stock which had for generations thrust its roots into the crevices of
granite, and was not easily killed by steam-engines. Austen Vane called
twice, and then made an arrangement with young Dr. Tredway (one of the
numerous Ripton Tredways whose money had founded the hospital) that he
was to see Mr. Meader as soon as he was able to sustain a conversation.
Dr. Tredway, by the way, was a bachelor, and had been Austen's companion
on many a boisterous expedition.

When