his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buying
souvenirs for so many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterfly
octettes that the head waiters were 'phoning all over town for
Julian Mitchell to please come around and get them into some kind
of order.

At last we floated into an uptown cafe that I knew by heart. When the
hod-carriers' union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief
goal kicker called out: "Six--eleven--forty-two--nineteen--twelve"
to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we
meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't working for the
furniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang
"Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the
twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused.

But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered
the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the
stuff that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin.

Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the
outside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the
proprietor.

"Mike," says he, "here's money that the good people have refused.
Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it's
tainted."

"I will," says Mike, "and I'll put it in the drawer next to the
bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the
church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter to
live in."

At 1 o'clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up
the front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of
the restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the
kind--black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a
cross between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's--the kind of woman
that's always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy
squad--and she stands there without a word and looks at the money.

Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a
bow.

"Madam," says he, just like actors I've heard, "here is a tainted
bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a
gentleman's son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me
the favor to accept it, it is yours."

The woman took me with a trembling hand.

"Sir," said she, "I counted thousands of this issue of bills into
packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in
the Treasury Department. There