t, and drew off toward the door. Two more of the courtiers
followed as unerringly as if trained in palaces. Solly Gumble bent above
the counter.

"Well, now, you young man, you listen to me. You been a right good
customer, treating all your little friends so grand, so I tell you
straight--you take that fine bird for forty-eight cents. Not to many
would I come down, but to you--yes."

Wilbur Cowan, overcome, mumbled his thanks. He was alone at the counter
now, Merle having joined the withdrawn courtiers.

"I'm a fair trader," said Solly Gumble. "I can take--I give. Here now!"
And amazingly he extended to the penniless wreck a large and golden
orange, perhaps one of the largest oranges ever grown.

The recipient was again overcome. He blushed as he thanked this
open-handed tradesman. Then with his blue jay, his orange, his dog, he
turned away. Now he first became aware of the changed attitude of his
late dependents. It did not distress him. It seemed wholly natural, this
icy withdrawal of their fellowship. Why should they push about him any
longer? He was, instead, rather concerned to defend his spendthrift
courses.

"Spent all his money!" came a barbed jeer from the Merle twin.

The ruined one stalked by him with dignity, having remembered a fine
speech he had once heard his father make.

"Oh, well," he said, lightly, "easy come, easy go!"

The Merle twin still bore the album and the potent invigorator that was
to make a new man of Judge Penniman. His impoverished brother carried
the blue jay, looking alert and lifelike in the open, the mammoth
orange, gift for Mrs. Penniman--he had nearly forgotten her--and
tenderly he led the dog, Frank. Not to have all his money again would
he have parted with his treasures and the memory of supreme delights.
Not for all his squandered fortune would he have bartered Frank, the
dog. Frank capered at his side, ever and again looking up brightly at
his new master. Never had so much attention been shown him. Never before
had he been confined by a leash, as if he were a desirable dog.

Opposite the Mansion House, Newbern's chief hotel, Frank gave signal
proof of his intelligence. From across River Street he had been espied
by Boodles, the Mansion House dog, a creature of dusty, pinkish white,
of short neck and wide jaws, of a clouded but still definite bull
ancestry. Boodles was a dog about town, wearing many scars of combat, a
swashbuckler of a dog, rough-mannered, raffish; if n