our trip to farther Mount Vernon,
and of the effect of the third degree's pressure on Jim.

Mr. MacDonald relaxed control of his dignity, and burst into a
hearty laugh. Gabrielle blushed deeply and faltered until I
proceeded a few sentences farther.

"Yes, Jim's old love-letters that I wrote for literary exercise
years ago, failed to impress the girls, who returned them. At the
fire they proved to be fireproof, and fell through the floor. The
sneaking detectives found them and brought them to me. Jim is now
at my room, completely ignorant of the charges against him, poor
abandoned wretch!"

I then subsided and reviewed carefully all the particulars,
concluding with the statement:

"I submit to your honors that there is no getting around my
proposition that every dog has his day."

As I closed, Gabrielle hastily withdrew. Her face told the story.
She passed out, my card tightly held in her hand. I knew I had won
the verdict.

Mr. MacDonald chatted with me for a few minutes, and thanked me for
my promptness in sending that telegram the night before, for
without it the postponement of the wedding would have revealed an
absurd situation and held us all up to public ridicule.

"I liked the way you put this thing," said he, as we parted. "Let
me see you again."

I now figure that the cash I paid Obreeon I would have won back at
that interview a good hundredfold, in view of what MacDonald has
done for me since, had there been no other developments.

CHAPTER XXIV

I was not satisfied with my partial victory before the lawyers. I
hastened to Fulton Market and there found Mr. Tescheron surrounded
by the slippery remnants of a big day's business in cold-storage
and fresh merchandise. Here the art of making a three-cent Casco
Bay lobster worth two thousand per cent. more on the New York City
restaurant table is largely developed. The middleman who stands
between the inhabitants of the sea and those of the land is indeed
a fisher of men as well as fish. As an Inspector of Offensive
Trades, I am ready to testify that the odor of the market is
generally an index of the strength of the bank balance. The
richness of the atmosphere around Tescheron's office convinced me
that Jim could not afford to alienate the affections of such a
father-in-law. As I advanced toward the small box in which Mr.
Tescheron sat wrapped in his scaly ulster, I caught a glimpse of a
live flounder, who appealed to me in whispers, as he mad