by the way?"

"Holding on by the skin of his teeth."

"What's wrong there?"

"Can't collect;" was the laconic reply.

The two companions in adversity were walking toward the post-office,
moved, perhaps, by the subtle attraction which that institution
exercises over the man who is "down on his luck." There was no mail due,
yet they turned, with one accord, in at the door, and repaired to their
respective boxes. As Wakefield looked up from the inspection of his
empty one, he saw Simmons, with an open letter or circular in his hand.
Catching Wakefield's eye he laughed.

"Well?" Wakefield queried.

"You know, Wake," said Dicky, in a confidential tone. "The thing's too
funny to be serious. Here's the Trailing Arbutus (you're not in that, I
believe), capitalization a million and a half shares, calls a meeting
of stockholders to consider how to raise money to get the mine out of
the hands of a receiver. Now, guess how much money they want!"

"How much?"

"_Five hundred dollars!_ Five hundred dollars on a million and a half
shares! I say, Wake, they couldn't be funnier if they tried!"

Agreeable as Dicky's company usually was, Wakefield was glad when the
boy hailed the Barnaby milk-cart, and betook himself and his insistent
brightness under its canvas shelter. The white covered wagon went
rattling out of town, and Wakefield, somewhat to his surprise, found
himself striding after it.

"Anyhow, he's hit it off better than I have," he said to himself; and as
he perceived how rapidly the cart was disappearing, he had a sense of
being distanced, and he involuntarily quickened his pace.

The street he was following was one that he strongly approved of,
because it had the originality to cut diagonally across the rectangular
plan of the town. The houses on either hand were small and
unpretentious, but tidy little homesteads, and he did not like to think
of the mortgages with which, according to Chittenden, the "boom" had
weighted more than one modest roof. In the strong sense of general
disaster which he was struggling under, those mortgages seemed almost
visible to the eye. He was glad when he had left the town behind him,
and was marching on between stretches of uncultivated prairie and bare
reddish hillocks. They, at least, stood for what they were,--and see,
how the wildflowers had thrust themselves up through the harsh gritty
sand; that great tract of yellow vetches, for instance, that had brought
up out of the earth