k in my
direction. Then he took some ashes from his cigar, wetted his finger,
and thus ingeniously removed all appearance of newness from the hole he
had made, carefully cleaning up the chips and putting them in his pocket.
Finally he concealed the brace and bit and opened the trap, disclosing
the rough stones of the ballast. I watched him in amazement as he tore a
mattress from an adjoining bunk and forced it through the opening,
spreading it fore and aft over the stones.

"Now," he said, regaining his feet and surveying the whole with
undisguised satisfaction, "he'll be as safe there as in my new family
vault."

"But" I began, a light dawning upon me.

"Allen, old man," said Mr. Cooke, "come here."

The Celebrity laid down his book and looked up: my client was putting on
his coat.

"Come here, old man," he repeated.

And he actually came. But he stopped when he caught sight of the open
trap and of the mattress beneath it.

"How will that suit you?" asked Mr. Cooke, smiling broadly as he wiped
his face with an embroidered handkerchief.

The Celebrity looked at the mattress, then at me, and lastly at Mr.
Cooke. His face was a study:

"And--And you think I am going to get in there?" he said, his voice
shaking.

My client fell back a step.

"Why not?" he demanded. "It's about your size, comfortable, and all the
air you want" (here Mr. Cooke stuck his finger through the bit hole).
"Damn me, if I were in your fix, I wouldn't stop at a kennel."

"Then you're cursed badly mistaken," said the Celebrity, going back to
his corner; "I'm tired of being made an ass of for you and your party."

"An ass!" exclaimed my client, in proper indignation.

"Yes, an ass," said the Celebrity. And he resumed his book.

It would seem that a student of human nature, such as every successful
writer should be, might by this time have arrived at some conception of
my client's character, simple as it was, and have learned to overlook the
slight peculiarity in his mode of expressing himself. But here the
Celebrity fell short, if my client's emotions were not pitched in the
same key as those of other people, who shall say that his heart was not
as large or his sympathies as wide as many another philanthropist?

But Mr. Cooke was an optimist, and as such disposed to look at the best
side of his friends and ignore the worst; if, indeed, he perceived their
faults at all. It was plain to me, even now, that he did not comprehend
the Ce