bler; and poor Chauncey is flitting about the
country hiding with his friends, and wailing because he'll miss the
Horse Show."

They boarded the palatial private car, and were introduced to a number
of other guests. Among them was Major Venable; and while Oliver buried
himself in the new issue of the fantastic-covered society journal,
which contained the poem of the erotic "Ysabel," his brother chatted
with the Major. The latter had taken quite a fancy to the big handsome
stranger, to whom everything in the city was so new and interesting."

"Tell me what you thought of the Snow Palace," said he. "I've an idea
that Mrs. Winnie's got quite a crush on you. You'll find her dangerous,
my boy--she'll make you pay for your dinners before you get through!"

After the train was under way, the Major got himself surrounded with
some apollinaris and Scotch, and then settled back to enjoy himself.
"Did you see the 'drunken kid' at the ferry?" he asked. "(That's what
our abstemious district attorney terms my precious young
heir-apparent.) You'll meet him at the Castle--the Havens are good to
him. They know how it feels, I guess; when John was a youngster his
piratical uncle had to camp in Jersey for six months or so, to escape
the strong arm of the law."

"Don't you know about it?" continued the Major, sipping at his
beverage. "Sic transit gloria mundi! That was when the great Captain
Kidd Havens was piling up the millions which his survivors are spending
with such charming insouciance. He was plundering a railroad, and the
original progenitor of the Wallings tried to buy the control away from
him, and Havens issued ten or twenty millions of new stock overnight,
in the face of a court injunction, and got away with most of his money.
It reads like opera bouffe, you know--they had a regular armed camp
across the river for about six months--until Captain Kidd went up to
Albany with half a million dollars' worth of greenbacks in a satchel,
and induced the legislature to legalize the proceedings. That was just
after the war, you know, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. It
seems strange to think that anyone shouldn't know about it."

"I know about Havens in a general way," said Montague.

"Yes," said the Major. "But I know in a particular way, because I've
carried some of that railroad's paper all these years, and it's never
paid any dividends since. It has a tendency to interfere with my
appreciation of John's lavish hospit