he dialectics of Hegel. As
my money dwindled I was reduced to quite necessary economies, and
while not what may be called a heavy eater, I am willing to admit
that there were times when I felt distinctly empty. Curiously enough,
my philosophy did little to relieve me of that physical condition, for
as someone has said, "Philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an
arrant jade on a journey."

But it seems that the journeying of my jade was near its ending. For
upon this morning, fortune threw me into the way of a fellow who had
been in my class at the University, who was to be my _deus ex
machina_. No two persons in the world could have been more dissimilar
than "Jack" Ballard and I, and yet, perhaps for that reason, there had
always been a kind of affinity between us. He was one of the
wealthiest men in my class and was now, as he gleefully informed me,
busily engaged clipping coupons in his father's office, "with office
hours from two to three some Thursdays." Of course, that was his idea
of a joke, for it seems quite obvious that a person who gave so little
time to his business had better have kept no hours at all. He greeted
me warmly and led me into his club, which happened to be near by,
where over the lunch table he finally succeeded in eliciting the fact
that I was down to my last dollar with prospects far from encouraging.

"Good old Pope!" he cried, clapping me on the back. "Pope" was my
pseudonym at the University, conferred in a jocular moment by Ballard
himself on account of a fancied resemblance to Urban the Eighth. "Just
the man! Wonder why I didn't think of you before!" And while I
wondered what he was coming at, "How would, you like to make a neat
five thousand a year?"

I laughed him off, not sure that this wasn't a sample of the Ballard
humor.

"Anything," I said, trying to smile, "short of murder--"

"Oh, I am not joking!" he went on with an encouraging flash of
seriousness. "Five thousand a year cool, and no expenses--livin' on
the fat of the land, with nothin' to do but--"

He broke off suddenly and grasped me by the arm.

"Did you ever hear of old John Benham, the multi-millionaire?" he
asked. I remarked that my acquaintance with millionaires, until that
moment, had not been large.

"Oh, of course," he laughed, "if I had mentioned Xenophon, you'd have
pricked up your ears like an old war horse. But John Benham, as a name
to conjure with, means nothing to you. You must know then that J