the national guardian
of personal safety.

He got away from his office about half-past twelve and in preparation for
the little dinner festival of this evening, for Miss Templeton had sent
her joyful telegraphic acceptance, went to several shops to order some
few little delicacies to grace his plain bachelor table. An ice-pudding,
for instance, was outside the orbit, so he feared of his plain though
excellent cook, and two little dishes of chocolates and sweets, since he
was at the confectioner's, would be appropriate to the taste of his lady
guests. Again a floral decoration of the table was indicated, and since
the storm of Thursday, there was nothing in his garden worthy of the
occasion; thus a visit to the florist's resulted in an order for smilax
and roses.

* * * * *

He got home, however, at his usual luncheon hour to find a telegram
waiting for him on the Heppelwhite table in the hall. There had been a
continued buying of copper shares, and the feature was a sensational rise
in Bostons, which during the morning had gone up a clear point.

Mr. Taynton had no need to make calculations; he knew, as a man knows the
multiplication table of two, what every fraction of a rise in Bostons
meant to him, and this, provided only he had time to sell at once, meant
the complete recovery of the losses he had suffered. With those active
markets it was still easily possible though it was Saturday, to effect
his sale, since there was sure to be long continued business in the
Street and he had but to be able to exercise his option at that price, to
be quit of that dreadful incubus of anxiety which for the last two years
had been a millstone round his neck that had grown mushroom like. The
telephone to town, of course, was far the quickest mode of communication,
and having given his order he waited ten minutes till the tube babbled
and croaked to him again.

There is a saying that things are "too good to be true," but when Mr.
Taynton sat down to his lunch that day, he felt that the converse of the
proverb was the correcter epigram. Things could be so good that they
must be true, and here, still ringing in his ears was one of
them--Morris--it was thus he phrased it to himself--was "paid off," or,
in more business-like language, the fortune of which Mr. Taynton was
trustee was intact again, and, like a tit-bit for a good child, there was
an additional five or six hundred pounds for him who had man