d there an instant, but the next sank
again.

Plaintively, querulously he repeated:

"It was in seventy-eight.... I lost three hundred thousand dollars."

"How's your little niece getting on?" at last demanded Jadwin.

"My little niece--you mean Lizzie? ... Well and happy, well and happy.
I--I got"--he drew a thick bundle of dirty papers from his pocket,
envelopes, newspapers, circulars, and the like--"I--I--I got, I got her
picture here somewheres."

"Yes, yes, I know, I know," cried Jadwin. "I've seen it. You showed it
to me yesterday, you remember."

"I--I got it here somewheres ... somewheres," persisted the old man,
fumbling and peering, and as he spoke the clerk from the doorway
announced:

"Mr. Scannel."

This latter was a large, thick man, red-faced, with white, short
whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He had a small, gimlet-like eye,
enormous, hairy ears, wore a "sack" suit, a highly polished top hat,
and entered the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant
trumpeting "Well, how do, Captain?"

Jadwin nodded, glancing up under his scowl.

"Hello!" he said.

The other subsided into a chair, and returned scowl for scowl.

"Oh, well," he muttered, "if that's your style."

He had observed Hargus sitting by the other side of the desk, still
fumbling and mumbling in his dirty memoranda, but he gave no sign of
recognition. There was a moment's silence, then in a voice from which
all the first bluffness was studiously excluded, Scannel said:

"Well, you've rung the bell on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of
the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out
shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to
cost me to get out of your corner? What's the figure? What do you say?"

"I got a good deal to say," remarked Jadwin, scowling again.

But Hargus had at last thrust a photograph into his hands.

"There it is," he said. "That's it. That's Lizzie."

Jadwin took the picture without looking at it, and as he continued to
speak, held it in his fingers, and occasionally tapped it upon the desk.

"I know. I know, Hargus," he answered. "I got a good deal to say, Mr.
David Scannel. Do you see this old man here?"

"Oh-h, cut it out!" growled the other.

"It's Hargus. You know him very well. You used to know him better. You
and he together tried to swing a great big deal in September wheat once
upon a time. Hargus! I say, Hargus!"

The old man lo