upon too exacting tenants; while his actual youthfulness gave Hillerton
the advantage over him of thirty years' seniority. Altogether Hillerton
placed a high value upon his confidential clerk, and it was with a very
genuine good-will that he followed up the last recorded observation, by
saying, carelessly:

"I hope you've kept out of the thing yourself, Peckham."

"Oh, yes!" Peckham answered, in a tone of indifference, copied after
Hillerton's own.

Peckham spoke the truth, as it happened, but he would probably have made
the same answer whether it had been true or not. He was of the opinion
that he was not accountable to Hillerton nor to any one else in the
disposition he might make of his legitimate earnings. In fact, it was
largely owing to Hillerton's inquiry and the hint of resentment it
excited, that Peckham put a hundred dollars into the Yankee Doodle
Mining and Milling Co. that very day. To be sure, he acted on a
"straight tip," but straight tips were as thick as huckleberries in
Springtown, and this was the first time he had availed himself of one.

It would be difficult to imagine why Peckham should not have thoroughly
liked Hillerton; difficult, that is, to any one not aware of the
unusual criterion by which he measured his fellow men. He was himself
conscious that he had ceased to "take any stock" in his employer, since
the day on which he had discovered that that excellent man of business
did not know the Ninth Symphony from Hail Columbia.

Against Fate, on the other hand, Peckham had several grudges. He was
inconveniently poor, he was ill, and he was in exile. With so many hard
feelings to cherish against his two immediate superiors--namely,
Hillerton and Fate--it is no wonder that Peckham had the reputation of
being of a morose disposition.

He was perhaps the most solitary man in Springtown. Not only did he live
in lodgings, and pick up his meals at cheap restaurants; he had wilfully
denied himself the compensations which club life offers. Living, too, in
a singularly hospitable community, he never put himself in the way of
receiving invitations, and he consequently was allowed to do without
them. He did not keep a horse; he thought a lodging-house no place for
dogs, and he entertained serious thoughts of shooting his landlady's
cat. He had always refrained from burdening himself with correspondents,
and would have thought it a nuisance to write to his own brother, if so
be he had had such a relat