thousand dollars. Mr. Harding, I beg your pardon. You are the
unluckiest man alive," and he went on to tell him of the
whispering-gallery and of the secret obtained in manner so
extraordinary. "And then, through my stupidity, worse than wasted," he
concluded. "I can't understand it; I read that note through twice
before I sealed it up. It is incredible."

"No, it is my luck," said young Mr. Harding, and took a fresh cigar.
"Or, rather, your luck," he corrected himself, smilingly. "Have you
forgotten that I am now your property?"

"God forbid!" said Indiman, hastily. "I give you back
yourself--consideration of one dollar. You're a witness, Thorp. And now
shall we go in to dinner?"

A position in a wholesale business house was secured for young Mr.
Harding, and for a month or two he seemed to be doing very well. Then
one day he resigned; a letter to Indiman gave the explanation.

"He's going to marry a wealthy widow," read out Indiman. "They sail on
the Lucania next Saturday."

"Then luck has turned for him," I said, heartily. "I'm glad of it."

"Hym!" said Indiman. "Perhaps so."

From the street came the sound of a hand-organ. It was playing Verdi's
"Celeste Aida," and so lovely is the aria that I could have listened to
it with pleasure, even when thus ground out mechanically. But,
unfortunately, an atrocious mistake had been made in the preparation of
the music cylinder. In the original the final note of the first two
bars is F natural, while in the third bar the tonality is raised and
the F becomes F sharp. The transcriber had failed to make this change,
and so had lost the uplifting effect of the sharped F. All the life and
color of the phrase had been destroyed, and the result was intolerable.

I fished out a quarter and rang for Bolder. "Send him away," I said,
somewhat impatiently.

The servant returned looking puzzled. "The organ-grinder said I was to
give this to the gentleman," he said, and handed me a small object. It
was a brass baggage-check issued by the New York Central Railway, from
Cleveland to New York, and bore the number 18329. I passed it to
Indiman, ran to the window, and looked out. But the organ-grinder was
gone.

IX

The Brass Baggage-Check

It is not every day in the week that a hand-organ plays "Celeste Aida"
under one's window with an F natural in the third bar where the music
rightfully calls for F sharp. Nor is it usual to send out a quarter of
a dollar to the man as