to the Company--on a half-sheet of note-paper. Now,
has he by chance gone to the other extreme, and believed that he is
in danger of becoming a pauper? The curious economy in the use of a
half-sheet of paper shows that some idea of that kind might have flashed
through his mind, and the two delusions can coexist, but it is not
common. As you must know, the delusion of vast wealth--the folly of
grandeurs, I believe our friends the French call it--is, as a rule,
persistent, to the exclusion of all others."

Then I heard Wilton's best English voice at the end of the study:

"My dear sir, I have explained twenty times already, I wanted to get
that scarab in time for dinner. Suppose you had left an important legal
document in the same way?"

"That touch of cunning is very significant," my
fellow-practitioner--since he insisted on it--muttered.

"I am very happy, of course, to meet you; but if you had only sent your
president down to dinner here, I could have settled the thing in half
a minute. Why, I could have bought the Buchonian from him while your
clerks were sending me this." Wilton dropped his hand heavily on the
blue-and-white correspondence, and the lawyer started.

"But, speaking frankly," the lawyer replied, "it is, if I may say so,
perfectly inconceivable, even in the case of the most important legal
documents, that any one should stop the three-forty express--the
Induna--Our Induna, my dear sir."

"Absolutely!" my companion echoed; then to me in a lower tone: "You
notice, again, the persistent delusion of wealth. I was called in when
he wrote us that. You can see it is utterly impossible for the Company
to continue to run their trains through the property of a man who may at
any moment fancy himself divinely commissioned to stop all traffic. If
he had only referred us to his lawyer--but, naturally, that he would not
do, under the circumstances. A pity--a great pity. He is so young. By
the way, it is curious, is it not, to note the absolute conviction in
the voice of those who are similarly afflicted,--heart-rending, I might
say, and the inability to follow a chain of connected thought."

"I can't see what you want," Wilton was saying to the lawyer.

"It need not be more than fourteen feet high--a really desirable
structure, and it would be possible to grow pear trees on the sunny
side." The lawyer was speaking in an unprofessional voice. "There are
few things pleasanter than to watch, so to say, one's own