st of vanity, he had built on Fifth Avenue. Then the house was a
"mansion," and its front of brown sandstone the outward sign of wealth
and fashion. Now, on one side, it rubbed shoulders with the shop of a
man milliner, and across the street the houses had been torn down and
replaced by a department store. Now, instead of a sombre jail-like
facade, his outlook was a row of waxen ladies, who, before each change
of season, appeared in new and gorgeous raiment, and, across the avenue,
for his approval, smiled continually.

"It is time you moved, Stephen," urged his friend and lawyer, Judge
Henry Gaylor. "I can get you twice as much for this lot as you paid for
both it and the house."

But Mr. Hallowell always shook his head. "Where would I go, Henry?"
he would ask. "What would I do with the money? No, I will live in this
house until I am carried out of it."

With distaste, the irritated city editors "followed up" the three-column
story of the Despatch.

"Find out if there's any truth in that," they commanded. "The old man
won't see you, but get a talk out of Rainey. And see Judge Gaylor. He's
close to Hallowell. Find out from him if that story didn't start as a
bear yarn in Wall Street."

So, when Walsh of the Despatch was conducted by Garrett, the butler of
Mr. Hallowell, upstairs to that gentlemen's library, he found a group of
reporters already entrenched. At the door that opened from the library
to the bedroom, the butler paused. "What paper shall I say?" he asked.

"The Despatch," Walsh told him.

The servant turned quickly and stared at Walsh.

He appeared the typical butler, an Englishman of over forty, heavily
built, soft-moving, with ruddy, smooth-shaven cheeks and prematurely
gray hair. But now from his face the look of perfunctory politeness had
fallen; the subdued voice had changed to a snarl that carried with it
the accents of the Tenderloin.

"So, you're the one, are you?" the man muttered.

For a moment he stood scowling; insolent, almost threatening, and then,
once more, the servant opened the door and noiselessly closed it behind
him.

The transition had been so abrupt, the revelation so unexpected, that
the men laughed.

"I don't blame him!" said young Irving. "I couldn't find a single fact
in the whole story. How'd your people get it--pretty straight?"

"Seemed straight to us," said Walsh.

"Well, you didn't handle it that way," returned the other. "Why didn't
you quote Rainey or Gaylor