your delicacy, Ham."

Mr. Tooting's face took on once more a sheepish look, which changed
almost immediately to one of disquietude.

"Say, I'll come back again some day and kid with you. I've got to go,
Aust--that's straight. This is my busy day."

"Wouldn't you gain some time if you left by the window?" Austen asked.

At this suggestion Mr. Tooting's expressive countenance showed genuine
alarm.

"Say, you ain't going to put up any Wild West tricks on me, are you? I
heard you nearly flung Tom Gaylord out of the one in the other room."

"If this were a less civilized place, Ham, I'd initiate you into what is
known as the bullet dance. As it is, I have a great mind to speed you on
your way by assisting you downstairs."

Mr. Hamilton Tooting became ashy pale.

"I haven't done anything to you, Aust. Say--you didn't--?" He did not
finish.

Terrified by something in Austen's eye, which may or may not have been
there at the time of the Blodgett incident, Mr. Tooting fled without
completing his inquiry. And, his imagination being great, he reproduced
for himself such a vivid sensation of a bullet-hole in his spine that he
missed his footing near the bottom, and measured his length in the entry.
Such are the humiliating experiences which sometimes befall the
Talleyrands--but rarely creep into their biographies.

Austen, from the top of the stairway, saw this catastrophe, but did not
smile. He turned on his heel, and made his way slowly around the corner
of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the
open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street
windows sat the Honourable Brush Bascom, sphinx-like, absorbing wisdom
and clouds of cigar smoke which emanated from the Honourable Nat
Billings.

"Howdy, Austen?" said Brush, genially, lookin' for the Honourable Hilary?
Flint got up from New York this morning, and sent for him a couple of
hours ago. He'll be back at two."

"Have you read the pronunciamento?" inquired Mr. Billings. "Say, Austen,
knowin' your sentiments, I wonder you weren't one of the twenty prominent
citizens."

"All you anti-railroad fellers ought to get together," Mr. Bascom
suggested; "you've got us terrified since your friend from Leith turned
the light of publicity on us this morning. I hear Ham Tooting's been in
and made you an offer."

News travels fast in Ripton.

"Austen kicked him downstairs," said Jimmy Towle, the office boy, who had
made a brea