but he had "put them through" when other agents had
declined to touch them. In fact, each one had been a claim which had been
fought shy of, and one whose final settlement had been commented upon
with open derision or raised eyebrows.

"Yours is the kind of claim I like to take up," he had said to his client
in their first interview; "but it's the kind that's got to be engineered
carefully, and money is needed to grease the wheels. But it'll pay to
grease them."

It had needed money. Stamps had no large sums to give, but he could be
bled by drops. He had changed his cheap boarding-place for a cheaper one,
that he might be able to save a few dollars a week; he had left the
cheaper one for one cheaper still for the same reason, and had at last
camped in a bare room over a store, and lived on shreds of food costing a
few cents a day, that he might still grease the wheels. Abner Linthicum
was hard upon him, and was not in the least touched by seeing his meagre
little face grow sharper and his garments hang looser upon his small
frame.

"You'll fat on the herds," he would say, with practical jocularity, and
Mr. Stamps grinned feebly, his thin lips stretching themselves over
hungry teeth.

The little man burned with the fever of his chase. He sat in his bare
room on the edge of his mattress--having neither bedstead nor chairs nor
tables--and his fingers clutched each other as he worked out plans and
invented arguments likely to be convincing to an ungrateful Government.
He used to grow hot and cold over them.

"Ef Tom 'd hev gone in with me an' helped me to work out that thar thing
about Sheby, we mought hev made suthin' as would hev carried me through
this," he said to himself more than once. He owed Tom a bitter grudge in
a mild way. His bitterness was the bitterness of a little rat baulked of
cheese.

He had kept safely what he had found in the deserted cabin, but, as the
years passed, he lost something of the hopes he had at first cherished.
When he had seen Sheba growing into a tall beauty he had calculated that
her market value was increasing. A handsome young woman who might marry
well, might be willing to pay something to keep a secret quiet--if any
practical person knew the secret and it was unpleasant. Well-to-do
husbands did not want to hear their wives talked about. When Rupert De
Willoughby had arrived, Mr. Stamps had had a moment of discouragement.

"He's gwine to fall in love with her," he said, "but h